24 September 2006

Brand Depot Opening

| blingblingbears
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Since a few months I ago I joined as a Brand Depot Frequent Buyer Club member, I thought I may as well go to check out the pre-opening shopping day for members only, in order to beat the rush on opening day. My intentions were to first wait a few weeks to let the big hype of it all die down and just pop in to see what it was all about, but I must say it was a little too temping for a shop-a-holic like me, so off I went.

Before I get into all the nitty gritty, well what else can I say than it was much more disappointing than I had expected, in fact it stunk – literally! Once I parked my car in the way oversized car park, the walk up to the front door reeked of fresh manure… It was so strong that I had to hold my breath! Once inside, a free hat and a directory was shoved into my hands and away I went…

Layout: it is basically just a huge warehouse with a few walls and windows between the shops – no roofs! So you can hear everything else from the entire centre… every store was playing a different song and it got a little, what’s the word… “over-noised” I suppose. The walkway is one big rectangle and you have to basically walk past every store to get to the toilets, parents room, and “refuel lounge” and back out again. Ok, a smart idea by the management to ensure the shopper walks past every store, but not very practical for someone who is busting for the loo, has a bunch of shrieking kids about to pee themselves, or is dehydrated from the stench of manure out the front and is dying to get a drink! A walkway to cut through the middle would be much more practical. I just can’t believe that the original completion date was June… what took so long to build that they were 3 months late in opening?? Very strange… and you know what? The place isn’t even finished yet – room for another 20 stores is yet to built.

Shopping & Prices: what a huge disappointment! Most of the clothes were absolutely disgusting, and none were at “factory” prices – most were actually at full regular store prices!!… hmm and for some reason I thought that Brand Depot was a “factory outlet”??? Silly me! To add to this disappointment, many stores were not even open (even though they had staff inside chatting and looked fully stocked and ready to go), and these were the ones that looked more promising fashion and price-wise. Other stores that were “open” were for example just a huge grey room with 5 pairs of shoes on either wall – what a joke! You call that a store?? To add to this I noted that many of the store’s cash registers and eftpos machines were out of order – so even if you did find something you wanted to buy… you couldn’t.

Refuel Lounge: the only food choices were pies (at $5 per pie – what a rip off! $5 for a freaking meat pie!!), sloppy subway, greasy Asian, sickening donuts and an overpriced café. Nothing very appealing to say the least.

All in all I found Brand Depot very disappointing and doubt that it will last very long, and after reading the Canberra Times story about the actual opening day I find it very hard to believe that the ATMs ran out of cash and a number of stores had run out of stock. Could it be because the eftpos machines in the stores were not working and that perhaps some of the stores only had a very small handful of items to sell anyways? Also, apparently 3000 cars were parked at the site on opening day – where? There are only 1700 car spots!! I think they are all trying to make the place sound better than it actually is…

So… did anyone else go to the grand opening? What did you think?

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For basic stuff Ikea is good. We got some standard white bookshelves for the family room for next to nothing a few weeks ago.

That said, I wouldn’t furnish any room that visitors might actually see with their stuff. Still, the founder of Ikea is one of the wealthiest people in Europe, so my guess is that he doesn’t give 2 craps about what we have to say!

c’mon.

IKEA you can get Swedish meat balls and bottomless cup of coffee for around $7.

Swedish meat balls, cabbage and boiled spuds. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I work at the business park and afternoon peak hour traffic has been much worse since the brand depot opened. It now takes an extra 10-15 mins to get into Civic, where I now miss my connecting bus, increasing my travelling to over 1.5 hours in the afternoon. Good thing I’ve got another job anyway – I won’t be considering any jobs located at brindabella business park in the future. It was bad enough as it was!

Quite right, Ikea is terrible. All the discerning people buy furniture from Do-MAYNE. It’s so much more individual! And if you are feeling really avant-garde, you can venture into Freedum.

Absent Diane4:25 pm 26 Sep 06

and what a scarey subspecies that is

yet another benefit to living in canberra.

Well whoever told you that was wrong. There was a rumour that DFO pulled out of negotiations with the airport (Brand Depot was originally going to be the DFO when Ikea pulled out, but even Mr Snow has said that there is no way Ikea would come to Canberra – they need a much bigger population than Canberra and the region to support one of their stores. Ikea is trying to get rid of all its smaller format stores (like Moore Park) and only do the huge stores like at Rhodes. Canberra won’t be getting one of those.

Heh – I saw Ikea referred to as “the abattoir of the soul” in the SMH yesterday. Couldn’t agree more.

blingblingbears3:30 pm 26 Sep 06

apparently we are getting an IKEA out at the airport in the near future… just a little rumour I heard

please…. no ikea.

ikea sucks.

its the mcdonalds of furniture.

its where people with no imagination shop.

whoever told you or sold you the notion that spannering together your own furniture is fun should be shot.

in fact any furniture made from particle board should be banned on aesthetic grounds.

Let’s face it there are not great brands. brand Depot can’t get them as DFO have them all and have apparently told them that if they go to Brand Depot they will be pulled out of all other DFOs over Australia.

How much cheaper can Valley Girl get anyway???

James-T-Kirk9:58 am 26 Sep 06

Anybody christened the bathrooms with their partner yet?

“I went out there today and had to walk a mile to find the bathrooms to start with which was a pain to start with.”

Do they have bathrooms out there? I thought they only had toilets! 🙂

I went out there today and had to walk a mile to find the bathrooms to start with which was a pain to start with.

And wow! $240 for a jacket? Bargin indeed.

What we need is an IKEA. at least they have cheap food and drinks in their refuel lounges.

But thanks for telling me about the $5 pies.

I’ll stick to Paddies and Market City.

> “brand detour”

love it!

They shouldn’t rush to build in the remaining 20 outlets – allow the current ‘shopfronts’ to produce the goods. If they can’t, bring in a new set of ‘known’ outlets…the place is more like a ‘brand detour’ at this point.

The Ct article is perfect example of its ever increasing use of reporting straight from the press release.

No fact checking, no verification of claims – just pretty it up, add the reporters name and print it.

very very lazy.

James-T-Kirk12:47 pm 25 Sep 06

Wow,

Another cool experience shopping.

Were you made to feel fat or in any other way unhappy with you body because you didn’t have any of the stuff that was being sold? 😉

While I am sad that you had a bad time, It is great to see that you got through the hype to see what the actual truth is. Shopping is about moving crap from them to us, and money from us to them.

the problem is they seem to have jinxed themselves with the name. it may be “brand depot” but there just aren’t any brands there, it would seem. “man to man”, “Parliament”, “roger david” – these aren’t brands!! at least, they’re not very good brands!

Gee, this is all very surprising!

Next Snow will appear on TV blaming the problems with the Brand Depot on Corbell.

Earlier this year some hungarian pranksters started advertising a huge new superstore and then constructed a large scaffold covered with material in the shape of a warehouse.

after some weeks of media manipulation about the new superstore – never actually saying what was being sold – they held their ‘opening’ and the thousands of shoppers rushed in to…. an empty material covered area in the shape of a warehouse.

many people felt ‘conned’ and ‘cheated’.

there was riots.

all filmed by the pranksters.

Haven’t been yet – but drove out to Fyshwick. Was concerened I’d get stuck in traffic to and from the airport – barely a car on the road

The wife went on the weekend, and despite being a keen shopper came back with one cheap sheet set. She said the rest was no well priced, and the place not particularly pleasant. Methinks they may have miscalculated.

It is just like the Sydney DFO. Same size, same layout, same shops, same lack of real bargains. Only one shop I went into had some shirts I liked, but they still were priced too high.

What they actually put in these places is the quit stock that doesn’t clear from around the country. All the shit that is left over from last season basically.

It was crap, there wasn’t any big name BRANDS there, just many of the lower priced brands like Valley Girl and Tempt, very disappointed indeed.

The expected traffic delays on the weekend certainly didn’t materialise.

Pure hype. The walk from the terminal to the Brand place with luggage? Puh-LEEZE!
There was a horrible traffic jam around 5pm on Thursday afternoon, I think there was some special pre-opening shindig?
It’s amazing to see how sheep-like people can be.
I stuck my head into the Homebush Factory Outlet shed a few months back, and did not see any bargains, at all. One food outlet charging heaps, crowds of people, but no bargains. It’s a swizz.

and all those people who use Majura Road to get to the northside during PM rush hour are going to have extra traffic to contend with. Thank you Mr Snow!

Agreed futto – smells like bullshit.

Good to know I didn’t miss out on anything too wonderful, just as expected.

On the theme of hype around BD, comes this snippet from the CT article,

He had spotted some people who left the terminal, still toting their luggage, who headed straight for Brand Depot. Others went shopping before boarding their planes

I call shenanigans!!!

I went yesterday… yeah not overwhlmed by any wonderfulness. The girls in bras and hings said that they had been having alot of problems with the phone lines / eftpos, and were luck it was up at the time.

I now know where the orange dust came from that’s all over my car…

While having not been to the canberra version, I am sure its just like the others parked in “spare” airport land. They are not nice, not cheap, and one visit lasts you a lifetime.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that when they build airports they deliberately have a lot of spare land around them in case the planes miss or overrun the runway, and now these areas are being built on?

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