REI's Black Friday Stunt Made It Famous. Now Members Are Revolting.

Every Black Friday, REI closes all ~195 stores, its distribution centers, call centers, and headquarters — and pays all ~14,000 employees to take the day off. It's done this every year since 2015. On paper it's the most expensive marketing stunt in retail: deliberately deleting your best sales day. For a decade, it was also one of the most effective. Now the company that built its identity on being different is being held to it — and paying the price. REI can do this because it's not a normal retailer. It's the largest consumer co-op in America — no outside shareholders, 25 million+ members who part-own the business. That structure is what makes "Opt Outside" possible, and the reason it worked isn't sentiment, it's economics: any company can claim to have values in an ad, but almost nobody can afford to prove it by walking away from real money. A closed store on the highest-revenue day of the year is a promise that's expensive to fake — economists call it a costly signal — and it bought REI a decade of free press and brand loyalty that no ad budget could match. But a costly signal cuts both ways. REI posted net losses of $165M (2022), $311M (2023), and $156M (2024) on sales that fell from a record $3.9B to about $3.5B. It ran three rounds of layoffs, cut its classes and travel business, faces an unresolved union fight at 11 of its stores, and in 2025 its own members voted down every single board nominee the co-op put forward. A political endorsement even forced the incoming CEO to publicly apologize. None of it is a footnote — it's the strategy meeting its own bill. Once you convince people you're not an ordinary company, they hold you to it, and REI's customers are literally its owners. CHAPTERS 00:00 The company that closes on Black Friday 00:25 What Black Friday actually is for a retailer 02:10 The co-op structure — and the "costly signal" idea 06:15 The results: 25M members, and mounting losses 07:50 The finding: belief is a debt you have to keep paying New Take Rate Research case study every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. REI is a consumer cooperative that publishes audited financial statements; figures here are from those statements and public reporting, and the union situation and board composition are actively evolving — this reflects the most recent public information at time of research. This video is for educational and analytical purposes only. #REI #Cooperative #Business #Retail #TakeRateResearch