The Hanifa Discussion Nobody Is Actually Having

I wasn’t even looking for it. I was minding my business on a Monday when an email landed in my inbox from Hanifa. They were “pausing.”

My first thought was: y’all bullied her into submission.

Then I considered it a little longer, read it in her own words, thought to myself - this wasn’t about bullying, and it wasn’t really about shipping delays either. This was a brand that scaled faster than its systems could keep up with, made a high-stakes move at the wrong moment, and is now recalibrating. And the internet, as usual, turned a business lesson into a verdict.

So, I want to talk about the actual lesson. Because I think we’re having the wrong conversation.

Background

Last November, Hanifa did a site-wide sale, “Hanifa Friday”, It was a 40% off sale, but many of the pieces were pre-order, with shipping expected between late December and early January. A lot of those orders were delayed... And the internet lost it. LOOOST IT!

People went everywhere with it. Quality. Price point. Whether Black-owned businesses deserve grace or accountability or both.

And I get it. But here’s where I want to zoom out.

Hanifa is considered a luxury brand. That’s the positioning, the price point, the image spent years building. So when with items you’ve been watching for months, admiring from a distance, waiting for the right moment are discounted 40%, you run. Of course you do!

But here’s the thing about discounting: if you want to lower your prices to bring in a new audience, that’s a legitimate strategy and there’s nothing wrong with it. But how and when you do it matters more than people think. A big sale during the holidays, on pre-orders, doesn’t just bring in new customers, it brings in customers who have never experienced your brand before. That’s true for any brand. The discount gets them in the door, but the experience is what decides whether they ever come back.

And that’s the part that got missed here.

Her loyal customers weren’t the ones loudest in the comments. They already knew what Hanifa was. They had history with her. Context. The people who were most upset were brand new, and this was their introduction.

Think about it like a restaurant. It could be the best food in the city. But if you go for the first time and the service is off, the food comes out wrong, the whole experience is just a mess, you don’t care what anyone else says about it. That was your experience. That’s what sticks. It doesn’t matter that the regulars keep coming back. You’re not a regular yet. You’re someone who tried something new and left disappointed.

You can’t borrow a reputation you haven’t experienced for yourself yet.

A personal note, because I’ve been here for a minute

I’ve been buying Hanifa since 2018. And honestly? I took the step during a Labor Day sale (15% off, honey). So I’m not here to say sales are the problem, because that sale is literally what brought me in. But here’s the difference: my first experience was great. The quality was there. The pieces still hold up today (I went to Chicago over the weekend and pulled that first set from the closet to take with me). That experience is what made me a loyal customer. That’s what a sale is supposed to do.

I did eventually stop purchasing, and it had nothing to do with quality. I just like my things a little more exclusive, and as she expanded, that wasn’t what it was for me anymore. That’s just personal preference. I genuinely applaud everything she’s built.

Post that ICONIC 2020 Fashion Show, Hanifa grew… quickly.

But I did have one quality issue, and it’s relevant. In 2022, I had a problem with the Cora pants set. I had worn the top before and loved it. By the time I wore the pants as a full set, I was well past the return window (like by monthsssss). I pulled them up and they came apart at the seams, almost fell all the way down to my ankles. I was standing there hanging onto the waistband. Like, literally…

I took them to a tailor, first (cause again, I’m wayyyyyy past the return window). He told me there was nothing he could do. They just weren’t made correctly.

When I reached out to customer service, with photos and what the tailor told me, I actually expressed concern in that email. I had watched how fast the brand was growing, and I genuinely wanted to know if there had been a change in manufacturer. (That kind of rapid scaling has a way of affecting things before most consumers take notice). They refunded me completely, no pushback, plus gave me an comp coupon code. And I appreciated that.

But here’s the message - I came in with four years of brand loyalty behind me. I had enough good to hold onto. A new customer won’t have that. They have no cushioning or positioning when things go wrong.

What discounting actually teaches people

Here’s something worth understanding about luxury items: it’s never really about getting the most for your money. It’s about wanting something so exclusive that the price almost makes it more appealing.

And of course, there’s a name for that. The Veblen effect is the idea that for certain products, demand goes up as the price goes up because the price itself is part of what makes it desirable. It signals exclusivity. Status. Worth. And price anchoring works the same way. In today’s vain society, we use price as a shortcut for quality, whether we realize it or not. Higher price, higher value. That’s just how our brains are wired.

So when a brand starts cutting prices dramatically, it’s not just a financial decision. It quietly chips away at the perception of the brand itself. You’ve essentially told your customer: this was always negotiable. And once that’s in their head, it’s hard to undo.

Brands that hold their value don’t create demand by being everywhere and accessible to everyone all at once. They create it by making you feel like you earned being able to buy it.

People don’t really want what’s cheap. They want what feels like it was worth the wait.

Drunk Elephant learned this the hard way, and honestly, it’s the cautionary tale I keep coming back to when I think about brand perception in today’s social media era. In 2023, the brand exploded when Sephora Kids started buying products en masse, to a tune of 77% year-over-year sales growth, 300% growth in social media following. By every metric, it looked like a win, so they catered to that market. But those weren’t their customers. Not the loyal ones, anyway. So, when that wave passed (when the tweens moved on and dupes made the same products accessible for a third of the price) Drunk Elephant saw a 65% year-over-year downturn. The loyal customer base that had built the brand in the first place? They’d already moved on. Because the brand no longer felt like theirs.

That’s what happens when you chase volume over loyalty. The numbers spike… until they don’t. And in Drunk Elephant’s case, they were left trying to win back the people you should have never lost in the first place.

The bottom line

Expanding is not the problem. Running a sale is not the problem. I found Hanifa on a sale, had an amazing experience, and became loyal because of it. That’s the whole point.

But context is everything. When I came in through that Labor Day sale in 2018, the experience matched the brand. It converted me. When new customers came in through Hanifa Friday last year, the experience didn’t match what they’d been watching on their fyp and timelines for months, and that gap is what broke the trust before it even had a chance to form.

Loyal customers are what sustain any brand long term. Not viral moments. Not seasonal spikes. Not the customer who dropped in for the once-a-year-sale and never came back. The ones who stay, who buy full price, who tell their friends, who give you grace when things go sideways, those are the ones worth building for.

A great first experience is the long game. It always has been.

I study brands because I genuinely love the anatomy of them: what builds them, what breaks them, and what the internet gets wrong about both. I’m already considering another brand post about why controlling your narrative and building a cult following might be the most important thing any brand can do.... I just have to wait until their court cases wrap up first. 👀

Stay tuned.