Yesterday, Mason and I checked out the new Outlet Shoppes of OKC for the first time. Here is our report.

Location and Parking

The Outlet Shoppes of OKC is a new outlet mall located at the intersection of I-40 and Council road, less than five miles away from our house. The entrance to the parking lot lies off of Reno (they’ve added a stoplight in front of the old AT&T/Lucent building).

The mall is laid out like a giant figure 8. Many of the sidewalks, while outside, are shaded and windy. Even though the outside temperature was closing in on 100 degrees, we were not terribly uncomfortable walking from store to store.

Parking, currently, is atrocious. We arrived roughly 10 minutes after the mall opened and happened upon a decent spot, but as we were leaving we saw people parking what must’ve been a quarter of a mile away. Currently the mall is driving people to and from their cars in golf carts, but who knows how long that will last. Hopefully the newness will wear off soon and parking will die down to a bearable level.

Store Selection

This map of the mall lists all the stores and breaks them down by category. The sheet lists 41 entries under “Apparel”, followed by 18 under “Footwear”, 7 under “Childrens Wear”, 19 under “Specialties and Accessories”, 7 under “Housewares and Home Furnishings” and 7 under “Food”. Right after I counted those up I realized that some of the businesses appear under more then one category, so adding them up those numbers does not represent the total number of stores.

Just pulling rough numbers out of the air here … I would say that at least 50% of the stores were clothing stores, and another 30% of the stores were related to shoes, hats, jewelry, and sunglasses. That’s 80% of the stores. At least half of the remaining stores were food or kitchen related (Le Gourmet Chef, Corning, the Kitchen Collection).

If you’re looking for something other than clothing or kitchen items, you’ve got: Book Warehouse, Calendar Club, and the Disney Store. And the Disney Store is only half clothing.

If you’re after food, you have seven choices: Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Bella Pizza, Chao Praya, City Bites, Primo’s, Orange Leaf Yogurt, and Smashburger. The line for Smashburger was overflowing out their door, so we passed. Instead, we had pretzels and drinks from Auntie Anne’s. There are lots of shaded tables outside to eat at.

Bargains

“Outlet Stores” were designed as a way for businesses to sell their wares directly to the public. Outlet Malls are collections of Outlet Stores. Many outlet stores are used as a place to sell of overflow stock at a discounted price. As a result, people go to Outlet Malls expecting a deal.

I don’t really know what most things sell for these days, but it just so happened that at the Nike store, I saw a pair of shoes for sale that I own.

These are Nikes. More specifically, they are Nike Air Force 1 red/black ’07 shoes. Not only do I own a pair of these shoes, but I was wearing them when Mason and I were at the mall. A couple of years ago, these shoes set me back around $100. The Nike store had a sign next to them that read Retail: $89.99 Our Price: $69.99.

It’s true; back in ’07, these shoes did retail for $89.99. I found them new on Amazon for $74.99, five dollars more than they were marked at the outlet mall. Prices on eBay were slightly higher.

While I didn’t find any massively discounted bargains, I did see a lot of sales. At the Vans store, they were having buy one, get one for half price. Another shoe store (Zumies, maybe) was having the same deal. I ended up with two new pairs of Vans shoes yesterday; one blue (I’ve been needing a blue pair of shoes for a while) and one gray. The circle, at least for now, is complete.

Overall Opinion

If you can find out what’s on sale before you drive out, I could see saving some money at the Outlet Shoppes of OKC. Sales are listed on the website, so that’s a plus. I’d go out there if I were looking for clothes or shoes I guess. Sometimes I go to the mall when I don’t know what to get someone for a gift, and this would not be the place for that (unless you get people clothes or shoes).

The Outlet Shoppes of OKC is open Mon-Sat 10am-9pm, and Sunday from noon-6pm.