Bad for business, bad for the world

Every Black Friday it’s a race to the bottom for retailers, especially online. In an almost universal game of monkey see, monkey do, brands feel the need to offer big discounts in order to remain relevant and participate in the silly season. 

This approach puts an unnecessary strain on businesses by cutting into margin, causing stock outages, and creating tension with physical retailers. We know this because we’ve been there.

Unfortunately, this has the effect of inflating regular prices to allow for discounting, and promotes cost cutting that prevents businesses from being able to create the positive impact and experiences that we expect of them. 

Zoom out a bit and it’s clear to see that the discount frenzy drives our culture of overconsumption - pressuring consumers to buy things they don’t need. You’re not scoring a bargain when buying something you wouldn’t otherwise have bought.

The truth is that despite being an effective incentive, discounts aren’t great for business, or the world. 

Value for money - all year round

As a brand that cares for our planet, people and customers, we believe it’s our responsibility to find better ways to market our products. 

Instead of evaporating the value we’ve created, we’d rather double down on delivering value, exceeding expectations, and do more for the world.

We’d rather put money into more sustainable packaging, research and development, and give to charitable projects. For example, by not doing discounts, we’re able to more than double our contributions to Water.org this month, with every memobottle sold in November providing 12 months’ clean water access to a person in need.

We’d prefer for our products to be available all year at a reasonable price. After all, prioritising hydration and cutting back on single-use products isn’t something our customers only decide to do in the lead up to Christmas. 

We’ll take this approach to avoid disappointing customers with product shortages after flash sales, and being tempted to air-freight stock just to keep them happy (see: global warming).

The big asterisk*

We’re not saying that we won’t have offers at all. We’ve been doing this a while now, and we understand that a little incentive goes a long way.

You won’t see any coupons, or site-wide discounts being offered, but the occasional value-add or reward will definitely be thrown into the mix. We may also occasionally reduce the price of some older styles when it’s time for them to retire. These types of offers allow us to provide you with extra value, whilst allowing us to deliver on our promises to our memobottle community and planet.

We also understand how lucky we are to have such a loyal and engaged audience. Which is why we’ll continue to concentrate on rewarding our mailing list and SMS subscribers with unique offers and early access to new products.

If you love a good deal and want first access to new products, please join us!