Gift

A designer, a researcher and a son looked STUPID on a saturday afternoon walking the streets of Milan. Purpose - Finding a gift to the mother of the son. As the son had already narrowed down gift list to a designer bag the task should have been simpler. It looked that way when the journey commenced, with the gift decided, shopping zone picked this one was supposed to be a walk in the park. Alright with the designer who was shopping zone guide too we embarked this adventure. Adventure it was -- 3 guys trying to pick out a designer bag from the fashion capital.

H&M outlet was an outright reject for all 3 at the first glance. Pathetic it was for us until we found UCB which was ridiculous. At UCB neither did we have options nor did we think that we will get value for money. A walk into Zara outlet to me was a little dull except for one master piece bag which was priced at 50 Euros. Value for money may be or may be not but it had Zara's brand value which convinced me it was worth it. I expected more from Zara especially after the dozens of case studies i had done in my course on their new product development and supply chain spread. I thought i will be spoilt for choices but they surprised me with lack of them to say the least. With almost an eye fixed on the 50 Euro one we dragged ourselves to another outlet a local one just to feel the difference between branded and non-branded. Not that we understood the difference but during that walk probably all of us were convinced that Zara one will be the fall back option to say the least if our adventure doesn't yield any more fruits.

Jasmine was our next stop. It was an exclusive bag outlet and a powerful local brand in this field but way way out of the budget and too stylish and trendy for the purpose. At UPM we fell in love with couple of bags worth 35E. Almost the credit card was peeping out of the pocket when our eyes landed on the Carpisa outlet whose visit was a must before we buy. With the designer and son convinced that the bags in UPM would make it all their way to India as a gift we crossed the zebra. At Carpisa we did find bags which fitted into all the requirements that we were looking for, may be the one that we did finally select at 26E was a little less stylish than those 35E ones. But then the Carpisa sales girl was what that clinched the deal for the Carpisa and not UPM where we were gay abonded. The gal was smart enough to give us options on colors and this human touch finally made the deal. Fortunately the dark brown one had little treads coming out and was the last piece. Once she found out that we were Indians and we found out that she had a Paksitani boy friend both seller-buyer wanted to work this deal. She offered us a 10% discount on the threaded piece and we asked for the undamaged piece at 10% discount. After a talk with the cashier she with a beaming smile agreed to give us at 10% discount on the piece we picked. Both buyer and seller happy that they got the deal; a win win trade. The son was happy that he isn't returning empty handed, designer was happy as it was from Carpisa (though he would have preferred 35E one for his mom) and researcher was elated because he helped the lazy son pick his ass up finally to buy the gift. STUPIDS - 'Super Talented Useful Person In Demand' S they were as it took them nearly 3 hours to get this done !! Thanks designer Thanks researcher ;)