My inbox (and yours, too), has become flooded with so-called “Friends & Family” offers—a marketing gimmick that’s become retail’s worst-kept secret. Before 2008, exclusive Friends & Family sales events were actually… just that. When I was a buyer at Bloomingdale’s, we held this event twice a year, and we were each given 40 invitations for actual friends, family members, and vendors. My team and I would meet to divvy up sending the invites to each important vendor representative. We tossed our addressed invites into a cardboard box in the hall for the mailroom to send out, and recipients would have to bring the card to the stores to get it scanned for the 20 percent discount.