Category: Shopping

If you’re looking to buy film or film cameras, Laqta is a local online store that has the largest collection I’ve seen so far in Kuwait. They have cameras starting from 15KD going all the way up to 246KD for a medium format Mamiya. They also have three kinds of 35mm film for sale as well as 120mm medium format film for sale.

Their instagram account is @allaqtaa but if you want to check out their full catalog then visit their website laqtafilmstore.com

Ever since old Salmiya got a facelift I’ve refrained from posting about it due to all the issues I have with the project (which I won’t get into in this post). But, one good thing has come out of it and that is Little Manila.

Over the past couple of years, the Filipino community has been slowly taking over the first chunk of Salem Mubarek Street that was made pedestrian-only a few years ago. It started off with popular Asian-focused supermarkets popping up, followed by shops and restaurants (we now have like 400 fried chicken and bubble tea concepts now). There is a lot of life on the street now with a great atmosphere in the evenings. We have live music, lots of outdoor restaurants, dogs and kids running around, and even pop-up markets.

Although I still have issues with the project, I like how the community has taken it over. When I was a kid we used to call the neighborhood old Salmiya but now everyone is calling it Little Manila. If you haven’t been to the neighborhood before or haven’t been in a while, you should come by. Parking and traffic are still an issue but if you’re willing to park a bit far and walk you’ll be fine. Here is the location on Google Maps.

Thrf is a new online thrift shop set up by the very fashionable @hesitant__alien. The account sells pre-loved, vintage, and brand new clothing all hand-picked by her and updated every weekend. All the prices and sizes are listed in the description and everything is very reasonably priced.

The clothes sell out fairly quickly so make sure you follow the account to be notified once they drop @thrf_kw

Ace Hardware opened up a new location at Boulevard Mall in Salmiya last week. The new location is bigger than I expected it to be, I think it’s bigger than the Hawally location. I now have two Ace Hardware’s near me now, the Hawally location and this Boulevard one but would have preferred a Bin Nisf close by as well. Ace is located on the ground floor next to Sears. Here is the location on Google Maps.

Sage products, or Breville as it’s called in the States, are now available in Kuwait at Xcite. They recently became dealers of the brand and so have brought over their full line of products including their coffee machines which are really popular. I used to have the Oracle coffee machine which I used to love before it died on me and I couldn’t get it repaired because there was no local dealer.

The prices at Xcite are more expensive than Amazon UK even though the UK prices include 20% VAT, so not sure why the Kuwait prices aren’t more similar. But, the prices in Kuwait are still cheaper than trying to order the machines all the way from the UK like I had previously recommended you do. Here are some examples:

Sage Barista Touch Espresso Machine
Xcite: 379 KD
Amazon UK: 343 KD

Sage Barista Pro Espresso Machine
Xcite: 299 KD
Amazon UK: 243 KD

Sage Barista Express Espresso Machine
Xcite: 223 KD
Amazon UK: 259 KD

Sage Smart Grinder Pro
Xcite: 99 KD
Amazon UK: 80 KD

If you’re a tea drinker, Sage also have some really great kettles (I have the Smart Kettle as well as their 800 juicer). Also, some items like the bread machine are out of stock in the UK but available here so that’s a plus for us.

Anyway, to check out their products you can search for “Sage” on their website although I noticed they had some items in their Al Rai branch that aren’t listed on their website so might be better to just pass by the store if you’re looking for something specific.

I downloaded the Avenues app years ago but then deleted it from my phone since it was pretty much useless, but turns out a year ago, the app got a major update with some cool features. One useful feature I found out about is called “Park My Car”. Say you want to go to a specific store in Avenues and you want to park as close as possible to it, in the app look for the store you want and once you get to the brand page you’ll find the “Park My Car” option at the bottom. If you click on it, the app will tell you which is the closest parking entrance and you can even have it take you to that entrance with Google Maps. Pretty nifty.

If you want to download the app it’s available on the Apple Store and Google Play.

Good espresso machines aren’t cheap and if you’ve never used one before you might be hesitant to invest in one which is why getting a used machine could be a good idea for a lot of people. There is a local Instagram account that specializes in selling used coffee machines, grinders and various accessories that usually are pretty expensive like Acaia scales. A lot of the items available for sale aren’t even available locally so most likely they were ordered online like I did with my setup.

Some cool brands of machines and grinders I spotted for sale include Baratza, Breville, Eureka, Profetic, La Marzocco, Niche, and Rocket. If you’re interested in making your own coffee at home but don’t want to invest a lot of money, check out what’s for sale on @coffee_market_kw

Thanks radaaitor

Assima Mall, the new mall located in the city right across from Solo Pizza and Kipco Tower is now open. Even though the mall is open, the majority of the stores are still under construction and haven’t opened up, but it’s still worth visiting and checking out because it’s such a nice-looking space.

Here is a list of places that are currently open. I might have missed a few but the list should still give you an idea of what to expect if you visit:

Aeropostale
Aldo
Atyab Al Marshoud
Bershka
Beverly Hills Polo Club
Boggi
Calvin Klein Jeans
Charles & Keith
Explorers Base
Faces
Grey Fashion
Hush Puppies
Ikea
Intersport
Jysk
Kiko
L’Occitane
Lakeland
LC Waikiki
Levi’s
Nespresso
Paul
Pull & Bear
Rituals
Riva
Rullart
Sephora
Sketchers
Stradivarius
Sun Glass Hut
Super Dry
Swims
The North Face
Tiramixu
Toby’s Estate
Tommy Hilfiger
Zara Home
Zara

The parking is also open so it shouldn’t be an issue finding a place to park. If you want to pass by and check the mall out, here is their location on Google Maps.

Back in July of last year, Adidas took over the Café Coco location in Avenues Phase 3 and a few days ago, the store finally opened up. The new location is actually a ground floor extension to the pre-existing Adidas store that was located upstairs in the SoKu area of Avenues. A lot of people didn’t know there was an Adidas there because it was tucked away, so this new extension right on the main strip provides a lot more exposure.

The ground floor space with the large upstairs area now makes it the largest Adidas store in Kuwait by far. If you want to pass by, it’s right across from Harvey Nichols.

Over the past couple of years, Mogahwi have really turned things around. At one point they looked like they were closing down after shuttering their Salmiya and Shuwaikh locations but instead, they restructured and came back a lot stronger. Their Kuwait City location got a major facelift and now they’ve reopened their Shuwaikh location.

Mogahwi in Shuwaikh used to be pretty huge, I think it was their main branch/head office. They ended up closing that location down, demolishing the whole building, and constructing a much nicer plaza in its place called MogArt. Now they’ve reopened a smaller Mogahwi there focusing mainly on art supplies.

It’s a small but really nice looking store and the items seem to have been curated, kinda like the best of the best art supplies. If you want to check it out, here is their location on Google Maps.

You’ve probably seen the ads on the roads for Drops, they’re a grocery store app where you order your items from and they’d deliver them to you. There are a bunch of other grocery store delivery apps but I was attracted to Drops for the simplicity which is why I’ve been using them.

I generally used to love grocery shopping in person but that was mostly when Sultan Center Shaab was open. The place was never too busy and it was always a good calming experience shopping there. Once that location shut down I never really got used to shopping at another supermarket and covid after that just made things worse. I live next to Lulu in Salmiya but that place is so overcrowded and tight, it’s never a chill experience shopping there. The old Sultan Center in Salmiya on the other hand looks great with their new redesigned interior but somehow managed to make the checkout process an even worse experience than before. I’ve stopped shopping there completely because of the checkout layout which is chaotic, squeezed and so old-fashioned. They really should have installed some self-checkout counters at least, it’s 2021! Or at least, at the very least set up a single queue multiple counters layout.

When vacationing in Europe a couple of weeks back I barely dealt with any cashiers, most places I shopped in were self-checkout and a lot of places now had RFID baskets where you just place your items next to the checkout screen and the machine prices everything in it. Super convenient.

Anyway back to Drops. I’ve used them a few times and I like them. Unlike some other apps, with Drops you don’t pick a supermarket and then shop for items. Instead, you treat Drops as a large supermarket and not just a delivery platform. You can shop either by category, brand, or just search for the specific items directly and add it to your cart. You can also create various “wishlists” of items you usually order to make it easier to add the next time. I’ve used them a bunch of times and the items generally arrive within 2 hours. The first time it took longer than 2 hours and they credited my account back with the delivery charge. All the items arrive in Drops branded boxes or bags and the delivery guy has a small trolly so you can order boxes of water for example and not feel guilty about the delivery guy having to carry them.

The worst thing about Drops though is their tracking system is shit. All my orders that were already delivered still showing as “Being Prepared”. When the item goes out for delivery you can’t tell nor can you track the driver even though these features are built into the app, they just never progress past the “Being Prepared” stage.

The prices of the items on Drops are similar to what I pay when I go to the supermarket myself. The only difference is I now pay 1KD to have them deliver the items which really isn’t that bad considering how much time they save me as well as having them deliver the heavy boxes of water instead of me having to carry them up from my car in multiple trips.

If you want to try them out they’re on instagram @dropskuwait and you can download the app from the Apple and Android app stores.

Kuwait’s favorite tabletop gaming store ‘Good Game’ started their two-week-long sale today. The sale is only taking place in-store so if you haven’t been to their new location yet this is a good reason to pass by (It also gives you the excuse to pass by Spunsprinkles upstairs).

Games will be discounted up to 90% and this will also be the very first time they have a sale on Magic the Gathering products. If you want to pass by, here is their location on Google Maps and they’re on Instagram @goodgamekw

Last month I posted about DesertCart Plus, a service by the Amazon dropshipping website DesertCart where for 5KD a month you get unlimited free shipping. The only caveat was it only applied to items that weren’t oversized, and DesertCart refused to define what “oversized” was exactly. So you’d only know if your item was oversized or not after placing the order. I mentioned I was going to order a few things small things to try it out and I ended up doing just that.

I signed up to the DesertCart Plus free trial and ordered two items, both very small and cheap, cheap as in shipping would cost more than the item which would mean it usually wouldn’t be worth ordering. One item was an adapter for my tire inflator (KD 2.900) and the other a battery disconnect switch (KD 3.200).

Both items ended up shipping and being delivered to me for free, just as described. In hindsight, I should have tried ordering a larger item to see if I’d run into any issues, but since DesertCart doesn’t define what oversized is, I don’t think that would have been very helpful of a test anyway unless I ordered multiple items in different weights.

Would I sign up to DesertCart Plus? No, but only because the service isn’t useful to me. This service is for people who tend to order a lot of small, light and cheap things off Amazon on a monthly basis. If you fall under that category then the service works. They offer a free trial anyway so you can give it a go yourself without paying the KD 5 monthly fee. Link

If you’ve been to Al-Rai area recently you might have noticed a Nike store that was under construction next to True Value. The construction work is now complete and the store is officially open, turns out it’s their new outlet location.

The Nike outlet is two floors, the ground floor for men and the top floor for women. They had a ton of stuff for sale and all heavily discounted. I was hoping to find some cool Metcons for sale but ended up finding only one color combo which I didn’t like but you might find something you like.

If you want to check the place out they’re open 10AM to 10PM on weekdays and 10AM to 11PM on weekends. Here is the location on Google Maps.

I was at JYSK yesterday in Shuwaikh looking for something when I found a sign pointing to an outlet in their basement, so I checked it out. Turns out it was the outlet store for AAW brands and it was pretty huge and packed. Some of the brands I spotted were:

Eastpak
Vans
The North Face
Jansport
Patagonia
Siemens
BOSCH
Coleman
and more..

If you’re looking for outdoor or winter gear for travel, or backpacks for school, you should check them out. Here is their location on Google Maps.