Friday, 29 March 2024
FeaturedNews

Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op shuns Black Friday in favour of Give Back Friday

The Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative has boldly turned its back on Black Friday with a campaign offering customers 0% off their purchases.

Flying in the face of the discount culture that seems to have gripped bike retail, in particular online, the co-operative are instead marketing ‘Give Back Friday’ (and Saturday and Sunday too, given the annual frenzy’s increasing calendar grasp).

Give Back Friday, as the title suggests, will see the co-op adding value to its current and potential customer’s shopping experience with them by offering workshop demos on puncture repair, chain repair and gear indexing.

“We recognise that simple bike problems can put people off riding their bikes, and we want to help you get out on your bike as much as possible by showing you how to fix it yourself. It’s just our way of saying “thanks for not pepper spraying us. Let’s make Friday great again.”

Pointing to the mad scramble for cut price goods already being promoted widely online by the cycling press, Edinburgh Bicycle added:

“Big retailers use Black Friday to blast out one-day offers that create a free for all feeding frenzy, impossible for smaller retailers to match. You may think that’s just tough luck. But we think you’d be disappointed if all your local shops closed for good, and everyone had to shop at huge corporations with names like McComputers’R’Us.

“When the Bicycle Co-op first began in 1977, we wanted to run the kind of shops that we’d like to shop in. We manage to do that by stocking the best and most interesting gear we can find, and by employing skilled, qualified staff. As a business, we try and offer value every day of the year. Best of all, we all work together for the benefit of ourselves and our customers, and not so that The Man Upstairs can buy new decking for his yacht. (He doesn’t own a yacht, by the way. The closest Jeremy will ever come to owning a yacht is if he steals one from a Saudi prince.)”

Read Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op’s great blog post on the promotion here.