San Francisco Premium Outlets, a nice place for good shopping deals (Livermore, CA)

By Mummy B.

Summer is coming up, so we need to buy new clothes for Mimi B. who is growing so fast. As time goes by, we also have to plan the birth of Baby B., and buying some newborn clothes is part of the to-do list . Hopefully we did already buy a lot during our vacation in France but we were still missing a few things.

Therefore, this saturday, we drove to San Francisco Premium Outlets which I heard about a few days before thanks to Coralie.

What can you find in an outlet mall?

An outlet mall is a place where there are only outlet stores just like La Vallée Village in Marne La Vallée (near Disneyland Paris). There are a lot of them in the United States.

So much that some tourists spend a whole day in those malls during their vacations in the United States. Indeed they want to buy some american branded items which are quite expensive in other countries (particularly in Europe), but wich are rather affordable here (especially when you have some additional discounts in outlet stores). Levi’s, Converse, Abercrombie & Fitch, Guess… it is so impressive to note how different is the price of an item from a country to another! You can also find in those malls stores that almost don’t exist outside of the US, like Bloomingdale’s or Saks Fifth Avenue. What a joy for fashionistas and american brands fans!

It seems so interesting for some people that you can find buses full of buyers who want to spend the day in the outlet mall. San Francisco Premium Outlets is no exception. We had to drive a lot inside the car park to find an available spot and we saw buses and shuttles dropping a lot of people willing to spend a lot of money! If you want to spare time (and not getting nervous to soon!), you can choose the valet parking, so you won’t have to look for a parking spot (in exchange of a fee).

Spend the afternoon at San Francico Premium Outlets

As soon as you arrive, we were pleased to see that the mall is very nice and clean. Indeed it is not a stressful indoor mall, but you can walk through pedestrian streets full of various shops, outdoor but covered in case of rain.

The stores are mainly selling clothes but you can also find cosmetics or home furnishing shops. Here is a list of the stores you will find in San Francisco Premium Outlets.

Most of the stores offer great deals, but some of them (the most expensive ones like Burberry, Prada or Boss) have only 20% to 30% sales. So it was still too expensive for us. But we enjoyed finding some very nice clothes in stores like Gap, Tommy Hilfiger or Hollister. As a lot of them have a special store or section for kids, we will surely come back for the next season!

For those who would like to spend the entire day here or would need to eat, there is a Food Court with many fast food stands, as well as a Starbucks or a Subway.

Being tempted by so many good deals

For this first time in an outlet mall, we visited a lot of stores (not all of them, it is way too much!) and came back full of bags! For sure, Mimi B. doesn’t need anything else for this summer and Baby B. has a lot of things in his closet even if he’s not born yet.

Here are some examples of what we found (you need to add around 10% of taxes to know the price we payed at the cashier):

Polo Ralph Lauren: