One of the first modern shopping complexes in Shanghai (Foundation: March 30,1993,Opening: March 26,1994) which was established with a 19 million USD investment and spans 20,000 m2 over 5 floors (1 basement and 4 above ground). Despite the aged appearance of Hongqiao Friendship Shopping Centre (6 Zunyi Road) it is still well worth the trip to go to this mall. Restaurants offer quality food and the grocery store in the basement has a wide variety of foreign products and sometimes have products not found in other locations in more modern shops (ie. this time found Jason branded Mouthwash Products for 88 rmb). They also offer discounts on a varity of products – On this trip I saw some Ice cream sandwichs being promoted at Freshmart at L’Avenue (across the street), they were not kept cold enough and so were melted inside the package. At the grocery store in Friendship, they were frozen and on sale for half the cost of Freshmart.
On this trip found a ‘upto 90%’ off sale for a variety of brands – upon closer inspection found that several brands were owned by one Chinese company – Global Retail Inc. (Group) Ltd. which was established in 1997 as the sole distributor for Nine West Accessories in Asia. They launched (-Asia denotes brand licensing) EQ:IQ (1999), Joan & David’s (2001), Anne Klein New York – Asia (2002), Easy Spirit (2004), Pringle of Scotland (2007), Karen Millen (2007), Nine West – Asia (2007), Steve Madden – Asia (2008), Carolinna Espinosa (2009), GRI multi-brand mega store (2011), Betsey Johnson (2011), Stuart Weitzman (2014) and possibly others since.
