Tag: shopping

Categories
Saint Louis

Will the market at Olive be successful?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I hope so. Last October the Costco U city opened, Oct 25, 2022 to be precise. A year later, we have a few more restaurants etc. opened, Raising Canes, Panera Bread, Chase Bank, Chipotle, and Chick-fil-A (open this Friday 11/17/23?). And now I walk around the area, I think it’s a notch above the fast food restaurants on the nearby Page Ave (north of Olive).

The Market at Olive 🫒: 我个人不是很喜欢面包店这种新的的咖啡机，以前在信用卡公司，还有一些旅馆比如说上海虹桥的嘉轩Hyatt Place 也有类似机器。我觉得这种咖啡里加了太多的creamer. Costco好市多对面的Chick Fil A 好像本周五会开。听说原计划里的靶子点(Target), 和本村较高端的买菜店Dierbergs 不来了。

Also, I took a video on the area (Panrea and the neighborhood) and uploaded to YT recently.

Last but not least, note that Costco was mostly built on the Jeffery Plaza, and NPR (STL Public Radio) has an article on it.

(Update 02-19-2024) Noticed an old article In the Path of a University City Costco, the Displacement Has Already Begun when googling “Olivette gentrification”. The original University Place is now called “The Market at Olive”. Let’s hope the original lot slated for Dierbergs and Target stores find new tenants soon.

(Update 08-05-2024) Target to open its largest St. Louis store in University City (fox2now). Earlier there was talk about Target not coming. It could be something happened during the negotiation (hit a snag or something), and now it seems they are coming. Now if they can persuade the Dierbergs to come too. Also note both Dierbergs and Target have stores a few miles down I-170 (inner belt) at Promenade: I understand sometimes people make jokes about that place (the plaza where Target is located) due to its traffic.

References

Market at Olive Development | University City, MO

Categories
Business

Shopping for Shoes II

Reading Time: 2 minutesI bought my second pair of shoes on the web. You may wonder how can I buy the shoes without trying out in the store. Yes I did. I found out the price is much cheaper in the online store, $85 vs. $130. I felt pretty bad for the store clerk who showed me the product. But again I am not a rich guy now. As you may know, the world second richest man Warren Buffett also uses coupon at the “Diary Queen” store. By the way, he owns the Diary Queen Inc. So essentially he is putting money from the left pocket to the right  🙂  

This is my first shoes purchase from web. Online shopping (and banking) is nothing new to me. Amazon started it with books and CDs about 10 years ago. The interesting part is, with the development of e-commerce, we can now combine both the web and brick mortar stores to buy almost anything online: from appearel, cosmetics, electronics, shoes and even cars. This does not mean the real store will phase out. I think they need to provide more value (better service, better price, more choices) if they want to compete with the online stores. In other words, they have to earn it. Otherwise, people will just go online and buy everything from Amazon. Also, the stores both have online and offline presence such as WalMart, Best Buy and Target will have some advantages providing customer services (compare to pure online stores).  

For those curious minds, I got this Johnston Murphy Shuler Bicycle Toe from Zappos. 

johnston murphy shuler bike 

Categories
Saint Louis

Shopping for Shoes I

Reading Time: 2 minutesDid quite a bit shopping lately. This all started one Monday evening I felt bored and went to shopping mall. I stepped into a “Sleep Solutions” store and the associate showed me the “personal computerized sleep profile analysis”. This reminded me of similar computerized thing in a shoe store. Basically it helps the consumer choose the right product and at the same time, it has some promotion effect (see, this thing is computerized so it must be advanced). Anyway, the old lady bragged about the mattress they got (the most expensive one is $2300!), and she told me she won’t be stingy on two things: the bed and the shoes. Because we as human beings usually spend much time on those two things. And the quality of beds and shoes can have big effect on our health. I think what she said is right. Since I don’t want to shell out that much money for the new bed, I decided to get a pair of new shoes right away.

There is a “New Balance” store near my home and I visited there and got some education about the sports shoes. Basically there are 3 main categories, walking shoes, running shoes and in-court shoes. The store has all kinds of things but it does not have my size. Also it’s full priced. My friend mentioned the Sport Authority to me so I visited them. And I found the Avia 2050 Running shoes which I bought. Here is a picture:

http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/news/images/avia2050x160.jpg 

Another good thing is on sale.

One of my coworkers ran a full distance Marathon in the weekend. While I don’t expect run as much as him, I am going to run a little more now that I got a new pair of running shoes.