As of this post, the blog is nearly at a million page views. I can't thank all of you enough for the continued support of the blog. I also appreciate the continued comments, it keeps me engaged and gives me motivation to keep the blog going. Many of you who comment on the blog have helped ensure that the facts about these places are correct, and that feedback is so valuable to me. Once again, thank you everybody.
Here is a mall in the heart of the Mexico City financial district. Reforma 222 is a 4-level shopping and entertainment mall. The mall is a hybrid indoor/outdoor center. The main entrance off of Paseo De la Reforma Ave. is an open air, attention grabbing plaza. The rest of the mall is covered by a roof, but only the stores, and the fourth level seem to have air conditioning. The mall is anchored by a Cinemex cinema and a 2-level Sanborns, as well as 2 large office towers. We made several trips to this mall since it was right down the street from our hotel. Many of the stores inside of the mall are on the small side with a limited selection of inventory. There is a collection of Mexican and USA retailers and restaurants inside of the mall. Many of the sit down restaurants stay open later than the mall retailers. This is a bustling mall and it was packed during the day.
The towers really make the entrance to the mall stand out. Paseo de la Reforma Av. where the main entrance to the mall is located, has skyscrapers lining both sides of the street.
Here are more views of the main entrance.
Now we are in the center court of the mall. The mall is only about a block long, but there are 3 floors of retail and a fourth floor with the cinema and a gym. There are a couple of fountains in the mall, the best one is under the escalators. The escalator to the fourth floor is located in the food court, but the elevator shown here goes up there as well.
The view from near the center court to the main mall entrance.
Some of the restaurants have these café style seating areas which are a nice touch.
The Sanborns main mall entrance is on the first floor behind the escalator in this shot. We will see more of Sanborns towards the end of this post. The second level of Sanborns is the restaurant, which has an entrance in the back of the mall.
Mixup is where the crowd is gathered. A musician Mon Laferte was making a meet and greet appearance for her fans. Mixup is an FYE/Sounds type of store with Movies, music, video games, electronics, and collectibles. Sadly I did not get any photos of this store.
Here is the second fountain. It is somewhat hidden near the entrance to the Italiannis restaurant.
Where the outdoor meets the indoor portion of the mall.
Here is the Sanborns restaurant entrance.
This is the fourth level with the gym, and Cinemex.
We watched a movie here late one night, the area felt very safe.
The food court is located on the third level.
The next few photos were taken after most of the mall closed, but the sit down restaurants and movie theater were still open.
McDonald's had a separate kiosk for desserts, and the ice cream machine works 😀.
A better view of the Sanborns entrance.
GNC even makes an appearance at this mall.
This hallway leads to another Starbucks and the back mall entrance.
There is a Starbucks at each mall entrance.
The second Sanborns Mall entrance. You can access the Sanborns restaurant on an escalator near this entrance.
Even though the stores had closed, there was still decent foot traffic in the mall.
Now for the inside of Sanborns.
As you can see from the next few photos, this Sanborns has a good selection of electronics.
This store is a little bit smaller than some of the other Sanborns I have visited, but they have a good selection of merchandise.
Toys
The awesome candy counter is here as well.
Tobacco counter.
Liquors
The escalator to the Sanborns restaurant.
The exterior entrance of Sanborns.
More retail posts on the way from the USA and Mexico.
Thank you for keeping up with this blog. You don’t have to, but you keep this blog active. I don’t know how Blogger works, but I assume( forgive me if I’m wrong) it’s not easy making your own blog, let alone updating it. Thank you for putting this wonderful, awesome information about retail out there in the world for people interested in it, and also for people who aren’t that interested in retail.
ReplyDeleteI certainly appreciate your praise. I really enjoy visiting these places and bringing them to the blog. Making the posts, especially uploading the photos takes time. It is not as easy as I thought it would be, but retail is an enjoyable subject for me to write about.
DeleteCongrats on the major milestone! I look forward to Future posts :)
ReplyDeleteThe concept of a half-indoor, half-outdoor mall is very interesting, too.
Thank you Retail Retell, I have a special post in the works for when the blog hits the million mark.
DeleteThis shopping mall looks really neat, thanks for sharing the images of it. In some ways, this place reminds me of The Galleria here in Houston. It also reminds me of some urban malls in Canada, but those are fully indoor obviously as nobody wants to shop in Canada's terrible winter weather. The monochromatic look of many of the mall storefronts reminds me a bit of Houston's The Galleria back in the 1980s when all the storefronts had black-and-white signage.
ReplyDeleteThe food court is pretty interesting. The greyscale monochromatic look is certainly going on there. The industrial looking chairs look trendy, but not necessarily comfortable or pretty. I would say that Canadian malls have nicer food courts, but this certainly isn't bad. It's better than the food choices at a lot of American malls even if our food courts tend to have more color.
It looks like Mixup is a pretty neat store. Is that a large chain or just a local store? I'm sure it would have been difficult to get photos of the place with all that security there for the singer, but at least we can see that they have CDs right up front.
The Sanborns store is a real gem. I suppose we say that about every Sanborns location that is shared. There is so much there that I wish we had/still had in our department stores. Even the presentation of goods is nicer than what many of our department stores have now. The electronics/music/video department looks nice. Boy, I wish we still had those here in the US! The tobacco counter and liquor display is a real department store throwback as well. Did the tobacco counter have the tobacco store aroma to it? Most young people are probably not familiar with that smell since tobacco stores are so rare now and maybe for a good reason.
The blog seems to be doing very well. There are a lot of comments these days and it looks like you're quickly headed to your 1,000,000th view. A lot of other retail blogs are not even close to that number even though they have been around a few years. I'm glad to see that the blog is alive and well. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing some of the new content that you have planned.
The mall was a much more comfortable place to shop at night than during the day. The day weather was in the 80's while we were there, but there is not much in the way of air flow through the mall like there is in the street. The food court in particular was very humid so we did not eat there. The bathrooms were particularly miserable inside of the mall proper. A lot of the stores had their own A/C systems and doors to enter. The sit down restaurants were much more comfortable and less humid. I wonder if maybe during the hotter months they do a better job of moving air through the complex. Only the front of the mall is open air, the rest is closed off.
DeleteEither way, this is a really nice mall despite the lack of a good air flow through the place. There is a lot to see and an awesome variety of restaurants.
There are several locations of Mixup. I did get some photos of the Mixup in the gigantic Santa Fe Mall. This location was much smaller than that one.
Yes the Sanborns tobacco counter has the smell you would expect from a 70's/80's era mall tobacco store. They do a good job of not letting the smell permeate through the rest of the store. I was able to get a few more Sanborns locations documented during my trip to CDMX so you will see more. There is another Sears/Sanborns combo that takes up the majority of another inner city mall that I documented. Each Sanborns seems to have this old school look to it and I can't get enough of it. We went to this particular Sanborns location just about every day we were in CDMX.
I am putting together a special post for when the million view mark is passed. I am shocked at how quickly the views have gone from 900,000 to the current 985,000. Comments are on the upswing and I am really glad things have picked up here. The blog will always be my preferred method of documenting retail.
Wow, that mall looks amazing! Haven't gone to Mexico City in a long time but I'll be sure to visit it when I do.
ReplyDeleteAlso lucky those people that got to meet Mon Laferte. I like her music.
The Reforma 222 center is definitely a good place to visit. There are a lot of good restaurants there if you want something different. Italian, French, American, Asian and Mexican cuisines are all there.
DeleteI am not familiar with Mon Laferte, but my wife is. The line you can see in the photo was all the way into the store as well. Mixup had a lot of events on their calendar from various stores so you may catch one when you visit. We spent about 7 days there and saw a decent chunk of the city and had a blast.
I think it’s weird to see American companies, like Starbucks or McDonalds in other countries. Maybe not as weird in Mexico or Canada, but definitely in places like Europe and Asia.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of differences in those places from what I understand as well. I know from visiting American chains in Mexico that things are very different there. Familiar but different.
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