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America's Best Bargains
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20063 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
1,538 Words |
| Author
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Joe Wilcox
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My discovery of manufacturer's outlets was a result of accidentally stumbling onto Potomac Mills, an outlet mall of gigantic proportions in Virginia. My wife and I were on our way to Virginia Beach when we turned off I-95 at what turned out to be a mid-Atlantic shopping mecca. And since we were there, we joined the millions of vacationers who make outlet shopping a part of their trips. It is a growing trend in the nineties.
The outlet thing
In fact, wherever there is tourism in America--from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Sedona, Arizona--outlet centers are springing up. There are now at least three hundred such centers in the United States, residence to sixty-five hundred manufacturer-owned stores, a number that increased by two thousand during the past year alone.
Only Disney World draws more people to Florida than Fort Lauderdale's Sawgrass Mills, and Virginia's Potomac Mills is, I have discovered, the No. 1 vacation attraction in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Gurnee Mills is the world's largest outlet mall. Situated about midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, it is only slightly more than a year old. Already fifteen million shoppers have worked their way through the nine anchor stores and 151 manufacturers' outlets, off-price discounters, retail clearance outlets, and food courts. Daily tour buses are a testimonial to the developers' belief that Americans enjoy shopping as recreation.
Sawgrass Mills, Potomac Mills, and Gurnee Mills offer outlet shopping on the grandest scale. The Mills are unique in that they are enclosed and laid out like traditional retail malls, with overhead monitors advertising merchants and guiding mall grazers through the conveniently divide quadrants. Most outlet centers are either open-air plazas or restored manufacturing plants.
But convenience is typical of today's outlet centers, no matter what the type. The shops are tidy, organized, well stocked and staffed, and take all the forms of payment accepted at retail stores. Plus, they offer additional savings that retailers cannot match, usually 20 to 70 percent.
Many people think that in shopping outlets they are getting second best. While it is true that these stores sell irregular or damaged merchandise, they are chock full of overstock, sample, or first
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