Off Road Fun

Baja quick tip:Don’t automaticaly pay full price

September 3, 2007 on 3:13 pm | In My Trips, SCORE Baja1000 Nov. 2007, resources | No Comments

One thing to remember when in Mexico is that the vendors are used to dealing with tourists. They want to sell us a bunch of souvineers for the highest price possible. They know we are there to spend money so they’ll start the sale price as high as they can. In many cases you can haggle. Obviously this wont work at the corporate chain stores but if you’re looking for shirts, hats, mugs, shot glasses, or some other souvineer you can get these from any one of the many independant vendors. There are so many vendors selling the same junk that the buyer can usually get them to reduce the price. What you’ll also find is that many of the street vendors are just “agents” selling some central business owners merchandise. Basically a very small number of independant owners (many cases americans) control the majority of the local market. They just hire the locals to sell their stuff either on salary or comission only. They open many stands & stores and send dozens of people on foot to sell their product. If it’s on commission, they don’t have to worry about how many locals they “hire” since they only pay them if they sell product.  If the street vendor looks desperate or a hard luck case, they will usually take less money for stuff since some commision is better than no commission at all.