REI workers taking Black Friday off, and they want you to join them
Closing on a major shopping day sends message to members.
For the fourth year in a row, Seattle-based outdoor retail chain REI will run its #OptOutside campaign, which encourages everyone to spend time outdoors on the biggest shopping day of the year.
It is closing all of its 153 stores on Black Friday, Nov. 23. REI will pay its 12,000 employees to skip work and “play outside.”
As in years past, REI unveiled a web page to help people find trails, research outdoor how-to articles, and share photos of Black Friday adventures.
But this year’s campaign also comes with some striking statistics.
“The best data we have says that, in any given year, 150 million Americans don’t spend any time outside. That’s half the country,” company CEO Jerry Stritzke said in a statement.
To hammer home its rationale for getting outside, the brand released data on the health benefits of spending any time outdoors. And REI announced a $1 million commitment to the University of Washington’s Nature for Health initiative, which will research the effects of nature on human health.
Launched in 2015, #OptOutside has ballooned from a companywide decision to an industry-leading movement. It has rallied more than 700 organizations.
“Closing on Black Friday is still the exception among significant retailers — with the size and scale we are, it’s still a little crazy to be closed on Black Friday,” Stritzke said. “But our 15 million members would be disappointed if we weren’t at this point.”
The challenge for the co-op now is how to engage the more than 300 million Americans who are nonmembers. And that’s where the research comes in — to support this year’s campaign, REI cited clinical data suggesting that spending time outside has positive preventive, prescriptive and mental health effects.
“We’re taking that journey from anecdote to empirical evidence of the healing power of what it means to be outside,” Stritzke said.
So this year’s message isn’t to just get outside, but to help take someone else get out, too.