Once a US-only phenomenon, Black Friday sales are now firmly part of the New Zealand retail calendar. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of snagging a one-off bargain – but are shoppers being had?

Black Friday is upon us once again. The annual ritual of deals kickstarts the Christmas shopping period. Retailers hope to clear old stock to make way for new lines, especially produced to take advantage of Christmas spending, and counteract the November sales slump. Shoppers hope to snag a bargain.

But the extent that people actually make savings on Black Friday is highly questionable. It’s important to be aware of the tactics that retailers use to stop yourself from overspending or buying something you’ll later regret. Price points and timescales are manipulated to maximise the purchases we make, so keeping in mind what you really need or want, as well as your budget, are key to surviving the shopping season without overspending.

The run up to Black Friday is often shrouded in secrecy – shoppers don’t find out what the deals will be until much nearer the date. This allows retailers to adjust prices nearer the time, depending on things like the competition, the market and the level of consumer buzz around different items. It also means it is more difficult for shoppers to be savvy. It removes much of the planning time that shoppers may need to work through an expensive purchase, and forces people to make purchase decisions faster than normal.

Shoppers cite lower prices as their main reason for shopping on Black Friday. But it only makes sense to take advantage of lower prices if you buy something you were intending to buy anyway. This often doesn’t happen.

When speaking to shoppers for a wider research project I carried out on borrowing credit, they told me about their expectations of the Black Friday sales and how the anticipation of reduced goods was exciting, but often derailed an otherwise sensible Christmas shopping plan. The main problem was that they didn’t know what would be reduced, so weren’t able to incorporate this into their longer-term financial planning.

Over half of the people who participated in the research said that they made lists to help control their spending over the Christmas period. However, of these, 80% said they had bought products during Black Friday that did not meet the Christmas agenda. Instead, they were bought on an impulse driven by the knowledge that it was “a good discount”. A theme of the research findings was that shoppers would make purchases (or not make them) based on how it might affect their mental state after the fact.

When making purchases, we (sometimes subconsciously) think about the emotional consequences of our purchases. If you buy something and regret buying it later, this is known as buyer’s remorse. As part of the human condition, we are programmed to try to avoid having negative emotions like regret. But it was also clear in my research that people also suffer from FOMO when shopping – the fear of missing out on a bargain.

When it comes to Black Friday, the pressure of a time-constrained sale means we often do not have enough time to decide on whether or not we should really buy something, and the inward fight to avoid both buyer’s remorse and FOMO is accelerated. This is one of the reasons why we make impulse purchases – because retailers force us into making a quick decision.

These emotions can become heightened when other factors are taken into consideration. My research highlighted how when consumers are already in debt, things are particularly problematic. This adds extra stress. The product may not have been previously considered as it was too far out of an indebted individual’s price range. But, with a significant discount, this brings the product closer to reach and makes it much more tempting – even though it still exceeds their resources. Many high cost credit providers capitalise on this at this time of year, offering quick cash to bridge that gap.

With pressure to spend on Black Friday and the ensuing weeks high, here are four practical ways to help you manage your spending:

1. Make a list

Plan the items that you want to buy for yourself and for others at Christmas. Stick to that list. Only allow leeway if it is a like-for-like purchase that enables you to cross something off that list.

2. Make a budget

Rigidly stick to what you can and cannot afford. If you must borrow money, shop around for the best interest rates, and have a clear plan of how you can pay this back.

3. Make a Black Friday spending pot

If you know you’re susceptible to impulse purchases at Black Friday, plan ahead. Set up a separate savings account to add to throughout the year, or have an informal method at home. There are lots of ways to save; use a regular saver if you can make deposits every month (these tend to have good interest rates), or have a container in the house to deposit the small coins in your purse at the end of every week.

4. Make time

Retailers are counting on you making purchases to avoid FOMO or buyer’s remorse. Unless you’re very confident, it’s best to rule out making any snap decisions. Savvy shoppers in the UK report being able to find better deals outside of the Black Friday time frame, using price comparison sites and doing research on purchases. This removes the constraint of the time-based offer, and gives you time to consider your options (and if you really want to purchase something in the first place).

Jane Brown is a lecturer in marketing at Northumbria University, Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For a brief moment in the late 20th century, New Zealand produced some of the dopest hand-painted clothing on Earth. Don Rowe talks to the founders of Kozmik Klothing. 

Most everyone in the 1980s dressed like shit. That’s just a fact. But for a brief moment in the late 80s, on Auckland’s North Shore, there was a hardcore nucleus of cool, a range of one-of-a-kind items that set the tone for a decade of rambunctious gear – rare examples of which can still be found today.

Kosmik Klothing sold hand-painted, hyper colourful, downright radical clothing from their workshop in Devonport. Nineties kids will remember.

Their aesthetic sat perfectly in the centre of a Venn diagram of road workers, toddlers and ravers: a psychedelic world of swirls, peace signs and fluorescent yin and yang symbols. You might recognise them as the preferred attire of two-time World Cup Aerobic Champion Brett Fairweather, aka the inventor of bloody Jump Jam. Or perhaps you’ve seen them embracing the bod of one SUZY CATO.

The clothing almost defies description, as if painted by the human incarnation of magic mushrooms themselves. And it’s still very, very valuable: five hippies, all possibly the same person, stand before a graffitied wall. A woman wears flowers for pants. “Kozmik Clothing: designed and made for peace love and happiness” – sells on Etsy for $280 plus tax. A group of students collectively dream of dancing in coconut bikinis beneath palm trees. “Kozmik: born to boogie”. $98 in Unisex, Large.

Founder Paula Wallace says they’re bullshit fakes. Wallace and her business partner Chalice Malcolm started Kozmik after meeting at Mark’s Fruit Safari, a “groovy fruit shop” on the North Shore in the early 80s.

“I used to paint a lot of textiles as a teen and sell stuff down at Victoria Park Markets,” says Wallace. “When we went into business it developed into a surfwear brand pretty quickly. We used to go to surf carnivals and sell them out of our car as we painted them. It was very organic and simple.”

The pair made the designs up on the spot, drawing whatever they liked, often with a personalised touch, probably under the influence of something. As the 80s drew to a close and the world got progressively worse, the Kozmik aesthetic started to change, gravitating away from juvenile hippie themes into more rave-appropriate sports gear.

“It kind of became psychedelic because the trend went that way,” says Wallace. ”It started off rainbow hippy really then in the mid 80s ski and surfwear went fluorescent. That’s when Kozmik became more well-known. The first thing that really got us visible were a couple of ski shirts that we did.“

Soon corporates were lining up, attracted to the unmissable loud palettes, certain they would get their staff absolutely jazzed up. Companies like Air New Zealand, Villa Maria, More FM, even the New Zealand bobsled team bought gear from Kozmik. Chalice Malcolm says they quickly branched out from clothing, taking on one-off commissions for anyone who would pay.

“I painted a racing car, I painted a parachute, we even did boats,” says Malcolm. “We did surf life saving gear, and we sponsored touch teams. We got the touch girls in and they painted their own, actually.

“It was about contrast and vibrancy. It was the end of the 80s and there were no worries about anything, really. We were in love with what we were doing, we were really happy, we would put crazy little quotes on the sleeves, we were anti-nuclear, it was just a lot of fun.”

Kozmik signed a series of distribution deals, getting their clothes into 25 stores around New Zealand. At their height they employed 15 staff, churning out a quota of 10 items each per day. Wallace, who took a brief hiatus to travel, says Kozmik shirts were showing up in airports all over the world on the back of a deal with a screen printer in America.

“The weird thing is that people really wanted to wear them,” says Wallace. “They were so loud. Back in those days you didn’t have Instagram, you barely had internet or mobile phones. You could only really get exposure through advertising, so it was all word of mouth. But there was nothing else like it.”

But following a trademark dispute Wallace and Malcolm spent two years registering their brand around the world, chasing down copyright breaches and aggressively protecting their intellectual property. About $500,000USD of goods were sold in Hawaii, of which they received nothing.

“We spent way too much time and energy on copyright and not enough energy on growing the business or making it more efficient or anything,” says Wallace. “It could only ever be as big as how many people we had painting.”

Wallace decided to leave the business, and Malcolm bought her out before moving the operation to Browns Bay. It was a traumatic process, Malcolm says, as the business clearly had potential. But a true valuation proved near impossible, and there were sore feelings on both sides.

“We laugh about it now but it was quite a big divorce,” she says. “We were both so invested and it was a really tough decision for her and I was really grieving also. There was potential but it hadn’t actually materialised and so to find value in the business and buy her out and all that got really complicated. But that’s just normal business stuff.”

As the haberdasheries in Parnell closed and consumers moved towards faster, cheaper fashion, Kozmik became less and less viable, hand-painted and custom-made as it was. In the mid 90s the trademark lapsed, and now belongs to someone else entirely. But the clothing remains unavoidable, surfacing at 80s parties and in the occasional hospice shop. Both Wallace and Malcolm have considered a rebirth, and with fakes selling for upwards of $250, there’s money to be made in nostalgia.

“I’ve still got a bit of a wardrobe,” says Wallace. “A few bits I made for my husband, my kids still wear original t-shirts. And I’ve got y-front underwear I made for my father-in-law.”

Malcolm says her kids have pestered her for years to get back in the game, finding Kozmik branded gear in op-shops around the country. And despite the stress and eventual demise of Kozmik, Malcolm remembers that period fondly. 

“It was amazing how the business just flew, it was such a great business to be involved in. Now my kids are going ‘Mum, please start it again, show us how to do it’. It might be time to give Paula a call.”