Black Friday is really just a gimmick.

It’s for the biggest high street retailers who have a lot of slack in their pricing structures.

For us, our whole ethos and business model is the opposite. We keep our prices low and competitive all year round.

We don’t want to lure in customers with flashy deals, we want them to come to us because of the quality.

Still and Bloom is our small, family-run business, based in Southampton. I started it in my garage during lockdown.

I couldn’t find beautiful furniture that had been handmade, using sustainable materials that didn’t cost the earth - or that hadn’t been shipped here from overseas.

I started with handmaking small side tables, and then console tables and coffee tables. Our offering then just grew and grew.

Almost as an anti-Black Friday move, we actually really like taking part in ‘Giving Tuesday’. We started doing it last year and this year we’re hoping to raise even more money for our chosen charity.

We’re pledging to donate £50 for each order we receive on the 3rd of December to Heartbeat, the Southampton cardiac charity.

As a small, family business, we know what a difference having a sense of community makes and the difference that even a small donation can make.

This doesn’t affect the price of our furniture, it’s just a gesture to help others.

Heartbeat celebrated its 30th anniversary last year and has done so much to help families of patients living with cardiac disease.

It’s also really close to us: my wife and my brother-in-law, Jack, both of whom work with me, lost their auntie Liz earlier this year: she died of heart complications.

Liz was such a generous, warm and kind person and she was a huge supporter of Heartbeat, so we’re doing this for her.

So, if you are looking to shop with us, then visit our website on Tuesday, 3rd December and as well as picking up a new, beautiful piece of furniture for your home, you could be helping us to raise more money for Heartbeat.

Nick Fisher

Founder of Still and Bloom