Here is another 2019 post from my deep archives. This is the Plaza Juarez Mall in June of 2019.
The sign is translated to "You will find everything at Plaza Juarez Mall.
Soriana, the huge supercenter style store that anchors the mall.
The electronics department was shrinking at this point. I wonder if they still have anything left in 2023.
Checkout counters.
This would have been nearly impossible to find in a year. Who would have known in 2019 that toilet paper would be nearly impossible to find in 2020. The sheer size of this display is what caught my eye to photograph it for this post.
General merchandise and mattresses.
This Soriana is a lot older than the Sendero Mall locations, but still looks really good for the building age.
More merchandise displays.
The Lawn and Garden corner of the store.
Appliances
More general merchandise aisles.
Electronics caps in the main aisle near the mall entrance. I wonder if the store was close to a remodel on our visit as this area of the store had a lot of holes in the merchandise selection.
Now we head into the mall. The Coppel anchor is just past Soriana in this section of the mall.
Let's take a peak inside of the Coppel.
The Nintendo selection.
Playstation and Nintendo area, notice the PS3 cards above the Nintendo stuff below.
Huge selection of TV's.
A/C units and bikes.
Some of the artwork for sale
Website kiosk, reminds me of the Kmart kiosks.
Appliances
Back out into the mall we go. It was just after opening that we entered the mall so some stores were still setting up shop. Keep that in mind as we go through the mall. This place gets really busy later on in the day.
The event stage.
Cimaco Department Store
Videogame department. To me, it is really cool that department stores in Mexico still have these. Department stores here really have a much better variety of products than you will find here in the United States.
Even though this area is not very large, the selection of items here rivals what Gamestop carries in 2023. It was a real treat to check out this department.
Clothes
When Hoverboards were fairly new.
Checkout counter.
Kids department.
Furniture department.
Furniture department with the electronics in the far view.
Cometics, sunglasses, fragrances, and jewelry counters.
Back into the mall near the food court, we have this prayer area.
Pet store, there are not many of these left in American Malls.
More views of the mall.
The mall splits into two parallel corridors between Cimaco and Soriana.
Each split corridor has a nice skylight.
I really like the old school look of this store.
Back to the Soriana/Coppel side of the mall.
Sounds, which is similar to an FYE store. We have featured several of these locations in the blog.
An advertisement of the food court area of the mall. We didn't get any photos this time around, but you can see a few on my previous post here.
More views as we leave the mall.
More to come, stay tuned!
The Soriana here is giving off some Sears bankruptcy era Kmart vibes in terms of the excessive amount of toilet paper they have in stock and the unfortunately downsized electronics department. The somewhat rough maintenance at this store is also a bit Kmart-like and rather unlike what we've seen at other Mexican retailers you've profiled on the blog.
ReplyDeleteThe outdated, even by 2019 standards, video game cases with non-video game products in them is something we saw with Kmarts. I'm sure someone hoping to see video games would be quite disappointed to see printer ink instead! Oh well, the retro vibes of those landline telephones is a bit Kmart-like as well!
I remember that during the pandemic, retailers here were selling some strange brands of toilet paper that might have come from the Mexican market. I wonder if they were getting some excess supply from Soriana!
Fortunately, the Coppel and Cimaco department stores are up to the higher standards we've come to expect from Mexican stores. The Cimaco electronics and video games area looks really neat. It really is too bad we don't have stores like that in the US anymore. The Coppel is very nice as well as we've come to expect from Coppel. It might not be Sears Mexico, but that's no insult given Sears Mexico's high standards.
The mall itself is quite nice with some retro aspects. The Joyeria Plaza is quite retro as you say. The prayer area is something that Americans would not be used to. It is quite strange to see that at a shopping mall, but OTOH, it perhaps shouldn't be unexpected given the cultural norms of the area.
On the earlier subject of things that are like Kmarts, this is a bit off-topic, but I recommend checking out the guest post I did at HHR about the Kroger Family Center store in Baytown (and I also mention the one in Orange, TX). These stores have an interesting history and I'm sure you'll find some similarities to Kmart in the Baytown store. These stores are worth checking out if you're ever in the area and really both the Baytown and Orange stores might be stores you might be interested in covering on your blog given their discount store history. Link: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2023/06/07/over-50-years-later-baytowns-kroger-family-center-is-still-one-of-the-houston-areas-most-unique-kroger-stores/
I took a look at your posts on the HHR site and they are very interesting. Since the Springtime I have been super busy and haven't had much free time to catch up on anything blog related. I am not sure when I will be able to catch things up, so I will put up some small backlog posts in the meantime, like this mall.
DeleteI wonder how the malls of Juarez have faired since 2020. With the border restrictions during that time, I am sure a lot of commerce was halted. This 2019 trip was the last time I have been there so I have no idea how things are. After the crazy start to the 2020's for me, I wish I could take a long vacation out of the country.
Unrelated to Mexican retail is a trip a few weeks ago to Memorial City Mall for the first time in about a year. I was surprised to see they are making some design changes to the interior of the mall. The best part of the changes is the colors they are adding. Colors like dark forest green and deep ocean blue is being used in parts of the mall now. There is updated seating near the main corridor of the mall with outdoor garden style seating. So far it was just this area of the mall that has been renovated, but it is a refreshing change from the bland vanilla look of the rest of the mall. The old Sears is still a vacant slab with the layout of the store still visible through the fence.