Donation to Amnesty & MSF for the Black Friday
Because business should also be about doing the right things
The Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or BFCM, is a well known period where consumerism is at his top. Most of the time it is the occasion of buying more regardless of our needs.
In order to keep our principles aligned with the spirit of Budo, we have decided not to partake in the consumer-driven doctrine of Black Friday, however, we will highlight an alternative offer. There is a discount every month that will remain intact.
Black Friday is the time where huge sales are made so since we are not providing a discount, we will opt to donate 15 percent of our sales to two chosen charities. We will outline the details in this article.
Why?
To be against the doctrine of consumerism. The excessive consumption and mass production have led to a huge decline of natural resources and also contributes to the exploitation of human labor.
The effect of this on our industry is as follows :
- Natural resources are endangered (for example the lack of high-quality timber for wooden weapons).
- The decline of workers who can produce high-quality goods. The demand of cheap products coming from China has forced craftsmen to lower their prices for a comfortable living.
- Sellers and buyers lack of awareness. Both often end up buying cheap products made in very low wages countries such as Vietnam or Pakistan.
KuSakuraShop is keenly aware of these issues and inequalities in the industry and is battling every day to keep our standards and integrity high.
Firstly, we offer products that have a reasonable price tag, which are carefully hand-picked based on our confidence that we are providing you, the consumers, with the best possible items for your martial art that can be found in Japan.
Secondly, we are dedicated to producing up-to-date articles and videos that educate and inform you about the industry. We want to show you how production is carried out so you can see that our craftsmanship is unmatched.
Lastly, we work closely with the makers in consultation and providing deep insight into how highly respected their work is evaluated to be. As a result, the prices have been seeing a slight increase in wooden weapons as of last year.
This situation is the result of a globalized world, with its pros and cons. We do believe in globalization, if we did not, we would not be selling worldwide.
By making people aware of our stance and principles, we hope to broaden people’s minds and understand how, as Budo practitioners, we can make an impact on creating a positive global and conscious world through our consumer principles. Instead of contributing to the consumerist doctrine, we offer you a chance to contribute to a better world.
MSF's Website: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is dedicated to protect life and stop suffering across the world.
Doctors without borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières in French, is a humanitarian organization that gives medical care to people in over 70 countries. Irrespective of religion, race, political affiliation or creed, they are carefully looking for to stay independent and impartial. MSF receives only a few fundings form intergovernmental organization or governments.
Once, during a discussion with Christian Tissier, he said: We’re not soldiers, firefighters or doctors, we’re not saving lives. We’re just doing Aikido.
Between us, who had never thought one day that he will be able to use its technical abilities to save their girlfriends, wives, kids from danger? Who can say it never came to mind? For most of us, the situation never happened and maybe never will.
Unlike MSF doctors who risk their lives in bio-risk or conflict zones, we as Budoka have very little chance to take huge risks to save our families or other people’s lives. They chose to save lives. We feel it is important, as Budoka, to honor those who are heroes of the modern history Helping MSF is our to do it.
Amnesty's Website: https://www.amnesty.org
We support a second organization: Amnesty International. It may require some few more explanations. Let's start by stating the obvious: a better world is a world in which the Fundamental Rights of everyone are respected.
The protection of children’s rights, protection of liberty of speech (especially for the journalists) are the main values we are supporting from Amnesty International.
Perhaps unbeknownst to many, Japan also has not been perfect in its treatment of human rights concerning refugees and liberty of speech.
Japan is not a well-known country for his culture of charity and donations. Moreover, Amnesty International is, in Japan, surprisingly incredibly small. We are happy to help and provide support in order to raise awareness on controversial topics of the country.
Goals & Guarantees
In 2017, we did very well during the BFCM, although our discount was also fairly limited. Not by any account, we hope that customers will be responsive to this initiative and to sale as much as we did last year.
We do understand that concerns may raise, like “will they really give the money to those NPOs?”, or “well, I’ve been a long time, grateful faithful customer, they could reward me for that!”, or again, “I don’t like MSF nor Amnesty, I want to choose another charity".
Let’s address some of those concerns:
Will we really donate this money, and how much?
For those who know us, personally or via social media, know that there are no doubts, this kind of actions is the base of our lives. We do understand that some will be skeptical. Nowadays it is normal and often wiser to doubt about commercials or marketers sayings. We will be straight, we will be publishing the receipts. We will know how much we gave to each organization.
We should reward our faithful customers first
Of course! We should! We are actually doing it using our review campaign system and the personalized quote system on orders over $600. BFCM is a short-term campaign, it is not designed for our customers but symbolize a concept of exaggerated consumerism.
Giving you the choice
About not being able to choose which charity to donate to, we have decided this year to donate half of our funds to Amnesty International and half to MSF. Since Japan does not have a strong culture of charities, these two are the most well-known global organizations. If you have any suggestions, please email us and we will research these organizations for future reference.
The actual goal, in numbers
On last BFCM period, we registered almost 400 orders. It was more than twice the usual number of orders. If we do as well as last year we expect to donate about 900,000 yen in total – 450,000 yen to AI and 450,000 yen to MSF.
To sum up our last point, if you read this line, you may have read this article entirely. For all your time thank you! It is the sales period and you may have found other places to make all your purchases. We hope we could have convinced you and if we didn't please send us an email to tell you why! We’re human beings and Budoka before being commercials, we need your feedback to grow and improve!
