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Comment by herbig | Hacker News Reader

Will their website not be taking orders as well? I love REI, but this is a pretty transparent marketing ploy.

Also relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day

I have witnessed the folks on this site being nitty, but this is just a whole new level. Because a company gave all of their employees the day off, they have to either take their website down or be called hypocrites by some HN user...? How on earth is this a remotely sensible position to take?

You can't get upset every time someone is being obtuse on the Internet.

I'm not upset at all. I simply asked if this was a rational position...?

Not terribly germane to this this OP but there are people who "close" their online stores at times.

One example is B&H Photo - http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ On the footer of their pages it says: "Please note that B&H does not process web orders from Friday evening to Saturday evening." I would assume that in the sect of Judaism the owners belong to letting your site take orders constitutes work.

Another example is my Girlfriend - she closes her Etsy shop when she goes on vacation because she'd rather not take orders and have customers wait for her to return for them to be fulfilled.

WordPress.com's support ticket system used to have business hours. Very baffling.

“assume” oh goodness you have no idea.

I live in the Brooklyn Hasidic neighborhood. A couple weeks ago, one of the gentlemen flagged me down on a Friday night. He needed me, a complete stranger, to come into his home at 11pm, go down to the basement, and push the "open" button on his dryer so his wife could retrieve clean towels for their (many) children.

Operating a machine of any kind, to the extent of pushing a button, constitutes work in their culture. There’s a whole wikipedia page about the ongoing controversy over whether it’s okay to use light switches during Shabbat or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat

(they thanked me with a slice of cake, which was nice)

Great anecdote! He just needs some sort of Rube Goldberg device to do it for him.

There's the whole Shabbat Technology industry - finding Kosher ways of using modern conveniences in accordance with the Sabbath laws.[1] For example, these folks make a bunch of devices: http://www.zomet.org.il/eng/

[1] I'm reminded of the non-electric tools the Amish adapt and use. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/02/22/172626089/insid...

I work for two large ecommerce stores that only do things during EST business hours. The post office comes at around 4 PM and that's it for the night/weekend. I don't think any customer has ever had a problem with that, since the company is very Made-in-America/family values oriented.

Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Am I the only one disturbed by the fact thats not all one mountain image that we are scaling down as we scroll? its just one photo after the next and the falling into the white void with CEO letter.

NITTY!

There's no pleasing some people. I'm reminded of:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/cards-against-humanity...

As I recall they sold out of bullshit rather quickly. Obviously these are just two variations of public relations, and as they say, if you can get people talking about your brand, that's good publicity. I still think it's a great idea to give people the day off. It's a business, why would we demand they go out of their way to turn away (on-line) customers too?

They will be taking orders but not be processing it till Saturday according to [1]. [1]http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/10/26/rei-closing-o...

So? It's in line with the brand, their employees aren't subjected to the terrors that come with Black Friday, and they still get sales. Everyone wins.

Well in a way, yes, it's a marketing ploy. In order to actually see it to fruition, they probably analyzed it from a marketing standpoint and found that this would buy them goodwill in their demographic. Corporations are cold soulless machines, and that's how they have to work.

But the people employed by the corporation are not soulless, and clearly some of them are at least not entirely cold, because I have little doubt that this idea was conceived in good will. I'm faithful that the individuals who came up with this, who pitched it to their bosses, did so with the goal of making a political statement, and treating their workers with respect as great side-effect.

I'm happy and hope it starts a trend, but REI doesn't seem like the kind of store that gets a ton of traffic on Black Friday. I'm sure they'll lose some business (hopefully offset by goodwill) but they don't seem like the typical retailer that really looks forward to Black Friday.

I'm curious why you would think that. REI stocks many things for outdoor recreation for the Winter season, including skis, snowboards, snowshoes, jacket of all varieties, wool socks, ice climbing gear/mountaineering gear in general... boots! - the list goes on.

The REI near me has a full-service bike shop and ski/snowboard tuning area. Then there's the people that need gear for taking off the winter going to South America.

Or, you're just stuck indoors, rockclimbing, which has it's own set of accessories, including rock shoes, harnesses, ropes, chalk, etc, etc, etc.

Yeah, REI does some business around this year, believe me.

REI is not a dicount retailer. So high volume at dirt cheap prices is not their business pLan, like say a Walmart.

From what I remember, the local REI-located very close to Frys-never got insane levels of Black Friday traffic. Also several years ago went to a diff REI on Black Friday, wasn't overwhelmed.

"Doing business this time of year" is not the same as "has well-known huge annual sales events on one specific day during this time of year." Like the grandparent post, REI wasn't what came to mind when I thought of stores on Black Friday; instead I think Walmart, Best Buy, Sears, etc.

It's true, they do not have one huge annual sale. They have huge seasonal sales: Labor Day, 4th of July, Winter Holidays - I went in there a few weeks ago, and got a $20 gift card just because I spent $100. It's kind of nuts.

Then there's the annual dividend, which is around 10% of your total purchases back to you.

Glad they're taking the day off.

Trust me they do. At my local store (relatively small compared to other cities) there are people lined up around the street.

Speaking of the website, it usually has a row of shopping categories along the top (Camp & Hike, Climb, Cycle, etc.), but if your browser window is less than 800 pixels or so wide, it all disappears into a hamburger menu. I thought I was on the wrong site. Sometimes less is just less.

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