The holidays are near and every year we find ourselves sitting with the same question whether we should participate in Black Friday – a day that is dedicated to sales, promotions and mass consumerism, and that has become louder and more aggressive in Marketing efforts. It's a day to prepare for the Holidays and have everybody buy as many Christmas presents as possible, as soon as possible.
Yes, we know, this doesn't sound too enthusiastic.
In the last two years we have chosen to participate in Black Friday to contribute to this day with a different intention and to turn this into an opportunity to educate, give and give back to our local community.
Those of you who have been following our brand for a while know that a percentage of every purchase in our online shop goes back to projects that support Balinese moms and children in education and their daily lives.
WHY WE PARTICIPATE
For this year, it is with a bit of an uncomfortable feeling that we have decided to participate in this year’s Black Friday activities. Again. However, not without our core intention to take this as an opportunity to give back to the Bali children we have been supporting with their tuition fees in recent years.
...and simply for the sake of offering consumers a choice that is in its core ethical and filled with good and honest intentions, and for educating and empowering consumers on the choices they actually have. Because not participating is not going to make it go away. Because not being ‘out there’ with what we have is giving more room to the ones that dismiss opportunities on how to make our planet a better place.
OUR TAKE ON BEING ETHICAL
Since the beginning of Ananda Soul, it has been one of our core values to create, develop and produce our jewelry designs in the most environmentally friendly and ethical way available to us at any point in time, in coherence and integrity with our values and our truth.
Every year we find ourselves raising questions around how we can improve our business practices on a regular basis to meet the expectations we have on ourselves to be in service of planet and communities, but also to which extent we as a brand can distinguish ourselves from the ones that present insubstantial claims around being environmentally and socially friendly, watering down the efforts of many sustainable brands doing their best to create transparency and improvements in this world.
TRANSPARENCY IS KEY
Our brand stands for mindful intention, sustainability, and responsible consumerism. We believe that transparency is not only an important step but imperative to create long-term, substantial systemic change in this world as well as in the world of business making.
Transparency provides information for our consumers to educate themselves and offers a platform to hold ourselves accountable in the public eye as we observe the rooms and spaces of improvement that open up through environmentally friendly practices and technologies that are being revised and further developed over time. With this, we strive to reflect a new generation of social entrepreneurs, driven by a mission to redefine the concept of lifestyle, while balancing both people, the planet’s resources, and purpose.
We want to encourage consumers to question their consumption and the impact their day-to-day choices have on each other and the planet.
We want to create rings, necklaces, malas, and jewelry that bring about blessings, love stories and good intentions and spread them throughout the world and by doing so pursue a path of sustainable production and creation that is the least harmful to Mother Earth.
We want to create a community that uplifts each other and that connects over the same values and principles.
OUR CORE VALUES
Our core values are our guiding principles and create the foundation of Ananda Soul:
- Ethically produced jewelry with fair wages and kind working conditions
- Low environmental impact through recycled silver and sustainable practices
- A profit system founded on giving back
- Respect for culture and land
- Jewelry blessed in Bali + encoded with love and peace
- Transparency & authenticity
There is so much more to say, to pitch for the consumer’s attention. However, this is a start.
If you choose to buy and participate in Black Friday as a consumer, we want to encourage you to choose wisely. Your choice of purchase is a choice you are making for the world and reaches beyond the transaction between you and a brand. The power is with you as consumer.
To learn more about our transparency and ethics, please visit our Ethics section and our Transparency report on our website.
To participate in our Black Friday sale sign up for our early access as of November 8 here:
Our Black Friday Sale will officially begin November 22, 2023 and will run until December 3, 2023.
Please note that our Giftsets and sales items are excluded from our Black Friday sale.
