Fayt founder Brittney Saunders is skipping the Black Friday discount race this year and putting $100,000 into a customer giveaway instead.
Fayt will keep its ranges at full price during the promotional period and has launched a Change Your Fayt campaign that includes a $50,000 major cash prize and a further $50,000 in cash and vouchers.
Speaking with Ragtrader, Saunders says the response to Fayt’s pull-back on Black Friday discounting has been quite positive.
One part of the campaign involved giving away 3,000 keychains to customers who spent more than $250 via the Fayt website. Thirty of those keychains were gold, and the customers who found one got $1,000 cash.
Saunders says all keychains were allocated in just eight days.
“So many people have posted their unbagging videos on socials; it's created a level of anticipation and conversation that feels quite different from a traditional sale,” the founder says
The campaign also includes a store-based exclusive, where customers who spend $200 or more in one transaction at any of Fayt’s five stores will receive a scratch card for a chance to win a Fayt gift card. This is available while stocks last.
As for the grand prize of $50,000, customers who shop online or in-store go into the draw. Every dollar spent on eligible product value is one entry into the draw.
Of course, Saunders knows that some people would prefer a discount. She says that if a customer was already planning to purchase from Fayt, this campaign gives them an additional opportunity to win. But if they'd rather wait for a sale, she says that is completely fine, too. “Boxing Day is just around the corner, scarily,” Saunders says.
During and after the campaign, which runs through to December 13, Saunders will be following all the metrics to measure the campaign success. But she says the biggest mistake would be judging this campaign purely on whether Fayt generates more revenue than it did during last year’s Black Friday. That’s because this year’s campaign is very different from its 2025 campaign.
“For me, profitability is going to be one of the most important measures. I want to understand what our sales look like when we're not heavily discounting our products, and what that means for our overall margins,” Saunders says.
“We'll also be looking closely at average order value, conversion rate, customer acquisition, the number of new customers coming into the brand, and how our existing customers are engaging with the campaign.”
And then there's the longer-term impact, which Saunders thinks is just as interesting. This includes whether customers are coming back and community connection.
“I also think there's value in measuring the marketing impact. Change Your Fayt has given us an opportunity to create content, tell stories, celebrate our customers and generate conversations that a traditional percentage-off sale might not.
“Ultimately, I want to know whether we've created a campaign that makes commercial sense while also strengthening the brand. If we can achieve both, that's a win in my eyes!”
As for Black Friday itself, the fashion entrepreneur says the promotional event has become an enormous beast that businesses almost feel obligated to participate in. This has scaled from a weekend of discounts to weeks of promotions, with some brands and retailers going for the whole month of November.
“I think we've reached a point where it's worth questioning whether that's actually sustainable,” Saunders says.
“As a business owner, I obviously understand the appeal. Black Friday can generate enormous revenue, but revenue and profitability are two very different things. You can have your biggest sales day of the year and still be sacrificing a significant amount of margin to achieve it.”
There's also the customer behaviour side of things. Saunders says when the entire industry is constantly discounting, brands and retailers inevitably start training customers to wait for the next sale rather than purchase something because they genuinely love it.
“I don't think there's anything wrong with having a sale, and I'm certainly not suggesting Fayt will never have one again (we absolutely will). But this year, I wanted to challenge ourselves to do something different,” Saunders says.
“Instead of putting $100,000 worth of value into discounts spread across thousands of transactions, we decided to put $100,000 into a campaign that could genuinely make a significant difference to some of our customers.
“It's still a commercial campaign. We're a business at the end of the day, and of course we want people to shop with us. But I love that we're experimenting with a different way of doing things rather than automatically following what everyone else is doing.”
Discover more Black Friday strategies in our Fashion in Focus: eCommerce report. Download the report for free here.