REI goes for four in a row
REI wants its customers and employees to get outdoors on Black Friday.
For the fourth year in a row on Black Friday, REI will close all 153 stores, process no online payments and pay more than 12,000 employees to spend time with friends and family outdoors as part of its #OptOutside program. This year, REI is also pledging $1 million in support for the launch of a new center of academic excellence at the University of Washington that will study the link between human health and time spent outdoors.
“Day in, day out, we're looking down instead of up, looking at our phones instead of the world around us,” said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke. "We're asking people this year to reevaluate that picture of themselves. To see technology as the starting point to a journey outside, not the destination. And to go explore the world with someone they love – on Black Friday and every day."
REI is an active investor in the growing body of research establishing the link between health and nature. REI has already invested more than $1 million into efforts by the UW, Sierra Club, UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital's Center for Nature and Health, and the Oregon Public Health Institute to understand how time outside impacts anxiety levels, ability to focus, childhood development, happiness and other health factors.
"The best researchers in the world are proving the case that getting outside is critical to our mental and our physical well-being," said Stritzke. "It's time to rethink time outdoors as a must-have, not a nice-to-have."
For the fourth year in a row on Black Friday, REI will close all 153 stores, process no online payments and pay more than 12,000 employees to spend time with friends and family outdoors as part of its #OptOutside program. This year, REI is also pledging $1 million in support for the launch of a new center of academic excellence at the University of Washington that will study the link between human health and time spent outdoors.
“Day in, day out, we're looking down instead of up, looking at our phones instead of the world around us,” said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke. "We're asking people this year to reevaluate that picture of themselves. To see technology as the starting point to a journey outside, not the destination. And to go explore the world with someone they love – on Black Friday and every day."
REI is an active investor in the growing body of research establishing the link between health and nature. REI has already invested more than $1 million into efforts by the UW, Sierra Club, UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital's Center for Nature and Health, and the Oregon Public Health Institute to understand how time outside impacts anxiety levels, ability to focus, childhood development, happiness and other health factors.
"The best researchers in the world are proving the case that getting outside is critical to our mental and our physical well-being," said Stritzke. "It's time to rethink time outdoors as a must-have, not a nice-to-have."