Shopping in Manila is unlike any experience I’ve had. In a city of more than 10 million people one would expect to find a few stores, but to say there are a few malls and other places to shop would be a drastic understatement.Directly across the street from my hotel was my favorite place to shop and eat – Mega Mall. As previously described the Mega Mall had some of everything, anchored by SM’s Department Store and Grocery Store. If I needed a couple of Cokes or bottled water for the room, off to Mega Mall. If I wanted to get a few Polo shirts or a new pair of pants, off to Mega Mall. If I was hungry and wanted some food, off to Mega Mall. If I needed a big screen TV, well … you get the picture.
Mega Mall certainly wasn’t the only place to shop in Manila. As a matter of fact, on the day I traveled to see the Mall of Asia I passed by at least eight other malls to get there. No kidding !! Now in a city this densely populated you won’t find valuable space taken up by a strip center. Instead, most shopping complexes are constructed like rectangular, multi-story buildings.
When it was lunch time in the office, where do you think we went to eat ? Why the mall, of course. The “office” mall was a part of a complex owned by another retailer known as Robinson’s. In addition to the mall, Robinson’s owned the building which the Accenture office was in.
My favorite day of shopping occurred when we traveled to a place called GreenHills. Greenhills was a place where you could haggle for the price to pay, so I brought along some of the people from the office to help me with the negotiations. Shopping with me this day were Cris, Karen & Hegel. I was looking for a handbag and wallet for Stef, some pearls for the ladies back home and something worthwhile for the guys. Wow, did I come to the right place for those items!
My first purchase was a Coach handbag and wallet. Now is this the real Coach product or a knockoff, that I don’t know, but the quality appeared to go good so I found several that I was interested in. I asked for the initial price and they said something like 1500 Pesos. I figured I might have more negotiating power if I purchased more than one item, so I made a counteroffer of two for 2000 Pesos. We haggled back and forth and finally settled in at two for 2200 and that included two wallets which were not part of the original deal. Ok, so I impressed my friends with my negotiating skills and we went to the next series of booths looking for pearls.
I felt a little out of my league looking at the pearls. How does one know the difference at first glance between a good pearl and a not-so-good one ? Well, I was going to find out. I figured that one good way to know the difference in quality would be to see how much the vendor wanted to “protect” certain items. After walking around several of the booths we stopped at one which hit me for some reason. I found a selection of pearls which I liked and started negotiating. Sure enough my theory worked. When I kept trying to drill down the price on a certain selection of pearls she kept suggestion that for that price I go to a different type. Not me, I found the ones I wanted and just need to get the best price. Using the power of volume purchasing I was able to negotiate for three strands of pearls and three sets of matching earnings for 6000 pesos. Since this was less than half of the price where we started I was rather proud of myself.
My last purchase was a pair a “Rolex” watches. Now there was no doubting the authenticity (or lack thereof) of these watches, but they still looked nice and I wanted a pair for the guys. Since there were so many of these watch vendors I tried a new strategy. In addition to the volume purchases I wanted to find out what the rock-bottom price was going to be. One way to do that was to insist on a price for a watch which the vendor was unwilling to give. Even after saying that I wanted two watches the lady said “No way – you go find somebody to sell you the watches for that price”. I think I really pissed her off ! Using the info I obtained from the pissed-off lady I went to another vendor and settled in on a fair price for several watches. Well, it was time to call it a day so I had my driver take my friends back to the office where I originally picked them up and then it was back to the hotel for me. What a good day !
Next Blog: The Accenture Team
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