Southampton business owner ditches Black Friday for Giving Tuesday

Founder Nick Fisher is opting for charitable donations over flashy deals

Black Friday is really just a gimmick. It’s for the biggest high-street retailers who have a lot of slack in their pricing structures. For us, our whole ethos and business model is the opposite. We keep our prices low and competitive all year round. We don’t want to lure in customers with flashy deals, we want them to come to us because of the quality.

Still and Bloom is our small, family-run business, based in Southampton. I started it in my garage during lockdown. I couldn’t find beautiful furniture that had been handmade, using sustainable materials that didn’t cost the earth- or that hadn’t been shipped here from overseas. I started with handmaking small side tables, and then console tables and coffee tables. Our offering then just grew and grew. 

It was a big step, but we’ve had such a great reaction and the company is thriving. Our range now includes dining tables and chairs, occasional tables and vanity units, TV stands, benches and storage solutions. We focus on locally sourced reclaimed wood from reclamation experts here on the south coast. We also use character-grade wood from responsibly managed FSC certified forests, and our hardwood dining chairs are made from 100% responsibly sourced FSC hardwood beech.

But to have got to this position we’ve had to look at our pricing carefully. We didn’t want to price ourselves out of the market, and we wanted our furniture to be available to everyone. I think we’ve got it just right. We also make sure all our wood is sourced sustainably, and we have tree planting initiatives too.

Every piece of furniture is also handmade, and it’s made to last. And we don’t think that slashing prices and compromising on our quality to just sell a few more pieces is worth it – for us or for our customers.

There’s lots of talk around the ‘fast fashion’ industry and how that contributes to climate growth, but I think ‘fast furniture’ is just as much of a problem. So much of the cheaper furniture is made of plastic, or not made to last. And when you put into play those sales tactics that lead to impulse purchases, like slashing prices for limited amounts of time, it can often lead to items then being thrown away.

Almost as an anti-Black Friday move, we actually really like taking part in ‘Giving Tuesday’. We started doing it last year and this year we’re hoping to raise even more money for our chosen charity. We’re pledging to donate £50 for each order we receive on the 3^rd of December to Heartbeat, the Southampton cardiac charity.

As a small, family business, we know what a difference having a sense of community makes and the difference that even a small donation can make. This doesn’t affect the price of our furniture, it’s just a gesture to help others.

Heartbeat celebrated its 30^th anniversary last year and has done so much to help families of patients living with cardiac disease. It’s also really close to us: my wife and my brother-in-law, Jack, both of whom work with me, lost their auntie Liz earlier this year: she died of heart complications. Liz was such a generous, warm and kind person and she was a huge supporter of Heartbeat, so we’re doing this for her.

So, if you are looking to shop with us, then visit our website on Tuesday, 3^rd December and as well as picking up a new, beautiful piece of furniture for your home, you could be helping us to raise more money for Heartbeat. Take a look at our website www.stillandbloom.co.uk.