Urban Outfitters’ Cruel Leather Sales to Draw Black Friday Rally From Christian Animal Allies and PETA
For Immediate Release:
November 26, 2025
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
Will holiday crowds be naughty or nice on the busiest shopping day of the year? That’s the question they’ll be confronted with as supporters from the Christian Animal Rights Association and PETA gather outside Urban Outfitters to call out the company’s cruel use of animal and planet-killing leather. The pop-up protest is part of PETA’s annual Free the Animals Friday, a nationwide Black Friday initiative that calls attention to the suffering of more than a billion animals slaughtered every year for leather and inspire holiday shoppers to choose fashionable and kind vegan options.
“Every leather handbag, jacket, or pair of shoes comes from a thinking, feeling being who suffered a terrifying and violent death,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Urban Outfitters to switch to compassionate vegan materials and urges holiday shoppers to keep cruelty off their gift lists by refusing to buy leather.”
Where: Urban Outfitters, Southside Works, 435 Cinema Dr. (near the intersection of Sidney Street and Cinema Drive), Pittsburgh
When: Friday, November 28, 2 p.m.
Why: A Manfred Karremann investigation released by PETA Germany exposed grueling, shocking abuse in the global leather trade, where more than 1.4 billion cows, sheep, and goats and millions of other animals are killed every year for their skin. Many animals are exported for slaughter and suffer during weeks-long voyages without sufficient food and water, and are exposed to all weather extremes with no protection. In many countries, animals are pushed to the ground, sometimes tied up, and have their throats slit with a knife. Because of poorly trained workers and the use of dull knives, their deaths are agonizing and can last several minutes.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
