Good! So you’ve survived the streets of south Mumbai and are ready for more bargain hunting! Like scarves, there are a variety of accessories that you can just throw on to jazz up any outfit to suit any occasion. Some accessories, you would do good to have a bunch of, others, a few good pieces would suffice for most purposes. One item that falls under this category, are watches! Now, if brands are your thing, it’s no worry at all, but! If you don’t mind wearing a rip-off of the latest Guess or Tag Heuer every now and then, you are bound to love my next shopping destination!
Welcome to Manish Market, CST.
Located close to CST, or the formerly VT station, this market has been around for quite some time and popular for all the Chinese goods you can get here. Now, to be very honest, I had found entering this place quite intimidating, for the simple reason that bargaining with the shop keepers here, had been a rather difficult task. Any attempt on my part to bargain, had only brought on some very derisive responses from the shop keepers. This I say, not to intimidate you before hand, but just as a helpful pointer how to overcome this marketing trick of theirs.
You see, the shops here, overprice their goods a good deal above the actual price of the product! So say, if you liked a watch out here, a rip-off of the latest designer watch of course, it would be safe to assume, the price quoted would be around 700-1000 bucks. Now, this is one direction, in which the conversation could possibly go…
Shopkeeper says,… this one… original Guess.. Rs. 850…
You say… oh.. very nice.. but its kinda beyond my budget… thanks… .. I’ll go see something else..
Wait wait… at least name your price..
Nah… it’s ok… your original offer is way too high
Come on… at least name your price..
I’d pay 100 bucks for this…. ( if you are not feeling too brave, you could start with 150 and stick to it. I start with 150. My mom picks 90)
Oh..no no… 150… u’ll not get that any where….
and so on and so forth…
No matter what.. you stick to 150. If need be, increase you offer by 5 bucks at a time. No more.
Remember, eventually, the objective, is to get the watch for 100 or 150 bucks max. remember, you show only enough interst in the watch to let em know, you like it only enough to get it for the price you want to pay,and not what he asks for!! Achiving this could involve walking away several times when you hit a deadend in the discussion. doubtlessly, they are bound to call you back and continue on talking this over… once you have them bring down the price in your comfort zone, say around 200 bucks, the rest should be easy. And if you are going with a friend, bargaining for the second watch should be easier. This one time I got one watch for 150 bucks and picked out another equally amazing for only 100 bucks.
(pictured below, the 2nd watch got for 100 bucks)
I would say.. not bad at all! If you have a bargaining story you’d like to share, you’re most welcome to post it here!!
Until the next post, So long!!
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