McArthurGlen Designer Outlet

Cole Haan yesterday in the outlet was awesome.
The store manager was super helpful and nice.

This review is for the food court 1 star — It is strange. It has high unfinished ceilings all of the carts/​stands/​counters look completely temporary and somewhat unkempt with wires and stuff visible and unorderly. There are bare concrete floors, a few tables and chairs that look like after thoughts reused from somewhere else, and there are not enough of them — while we were there people were hauling them in from the outside. All of the vendors are using tablets/​ipads for transactions, so it has a modern edge — but the rest of the game needs to be stepped up in a big way.

In general, this is a stunning outdoor mall with nice aesthetic appeal. The buildings remind me of royalty and European-​style architecture. Walking around is great albeit the windy weather and chilly breeze. Be sure to wear warm clothes while shopping!
The prices are expensive despite the discounts. I remember looking at Gap and seeing some cheap plain t-​shirts but I rarely saw good deals. The customer service is fair, I haven’t had any bad experiences yet. The employees mostly ignore you unless you’re either holding something or at the register.

The McArthurGlen Outlets definitely didn’t stand up to the hype. From what people told me about them, I thought this was going to be the best outlet mall ever when in reality, it’s just alright. Some of the stores offer better deals and service than others but this is a review of the mall so I’m avoiding discussing the individual stores other than saying that there is a decent selection of places for people of all ages. The only thing they lacked was a variety of food choices.
As others have mentioned, there are LOTS of empty stores. It seemed like every 2^nd shop had a «coming soon» sign but with no indication of what is actually going to be «coming soon».
I like the idea of being able to walk between stores. It wasn’t too much of a trek and the holiday decorations, especially the HUGE Christmas tree in the centre courtyard, were a nice touch. I don’t know if I’d want to be here on a cold day though. By the end of our visit it was getting pretty windy and unpleasant.
Another thing I found unusual was that there wasn’t a place to check luggage. If they want to be known as an airport mall, this seems important…

Not worth visiting. The walk from the sky train in not that long, but you definitely feel it if you have a ton of luggage with you. Also, what kind of airport mall does not have lockers to store your luggage? Ridiculous. Shouldn’t that be the first thing you build? Very poor planning.

Lots of parking, and a good chunk of the stores are open. Not everything, but enough to make the trip worth it! I got some really amazing deals at the J crew just in time for christmas! It was the soft opening of this amazing designer vintage store (they claimed the largest in north america or something?) Beautifully curated and amazing brands and condition. Happy to sugar high at lindt in between stores! I can’t wait for more of it to open :)

Pros:
— Sale everywhere! In every store!
— Designer brand stores
— Includes coffee shop for a dose of much-​needed caffeine for shopping
Cons:
— Terrible customer service from sales reps. Not just one person, not two, but a couple. In almost every store, there’s a shitty sales person.
Here is my full story on only ONE of the many encounters of my bad customer service experience. Please fire the blonde Caucasian male working at Watch Station. He is very unfit to be working in customer service.
I walked into Watch Station with the intention of buying a Michael Kors watch I’ve been dying to get for over a year now.
I browsed the counters for a little while trying to remember which one was the one I’ve been wanting. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at MK watches, so I decided the best way to figure out the one I wanted was to try a couple on then narrow them down.
I first asked a male Asian sales rep there if I could try one on. He quickly got up to unlock the display for me with no hesitation and said yes to me. I tried it on, but it was okay. I gave it back to him. So I walked over to another display, hovered for about 5 minutes then asked the same Asian guy if I could try three of them on at the same time now. He was a little hesitant on letting me try on all three, but he didn’t say anything about it and let me do it anyway. It seemed as if he jumped straight to the «Say yes to every customer,» rule which I liked.
I tried three watches on side by side. This whole time, a blonde male Caucasian sales rep kept eyeing me in a way that made me feel intimidated and uncomfortable. It was a little rude too. He occasionally asked if he could help me and I said I was okay. But he continued to glance over way too often as if I was a criminal. After I tried on all three watches, he asked me once more if I needed help. And I gave him the three watches to put back on display. His hands were empty yet he stood there for a couple seconds, hesitating and unwilling to take them from me AS IF I was a huge hassle and annoyance to him to try on things and have them put back. He said with an extremely rude attitude, «We got a watch collection going on here huh?» Then ever so slowly began picking the watches off my open palms. All while giving me the absolute rudest glare, staring down at me as if I make his job miserable. All I did was try on a total of four watches with the intention of buying the perfect one out of those.
He basically assumed that I was just trying on a bunch of stuff with no intention of buying. He was wrong for assuming. And even if I was, you shouldn’t treat a customer that way and come off like a jerk.
He made my shopping experience at this store absolutely terrible. I felt unwelcome, looked down upon, and not special, like a customer should feel. This blonde Caucasian man is a PRIME EXAMPLE of somebody who should never be allowed to work in customer service. I felt the OPPOSITE of valued, because of his rude negative attitude.
In conclusion to this experience, he should be fired. Period. Doesn’t matter if he was having a bad day, doesn’t matter whether I did or didn’t have intentions of purchasing something, THERE IS NEVER AN EXCUSE TO GIVE SHITTY CUSTOMER SERVICE. Especially when I wasn’t even rude to begin with.

I think this place has potential for growth. I dipped into Nike $ 99 ish frees and variety of styles existed here. Lindt– bonus. Get 100 balls for $ 30. The banana republic is promising and has great work staples. Jcrew was also impressive. The remaining stores didn’t necessarily have blowout sales, so I will wait for more.
There is an ice cream shop here and I believe I also saw a Mexican restaurant of sorts. I hear there are these cool ice cream churro sandwiches but I was full from lunch so didn’t explore this venture.

Overall, this outlet mall is just ok. The mall isn’t completely filled out yet, so the selection isn’t the greatest. It does have nice European-​style façades on the stores, though. With the exchange rate and hassles of crossing the border, I can see why Canadians would shop here instead of heading to Washington for the malls there.

I was disappointed that we came and only a few handful of stores were open. They need more directories as we found ourselves roaming around trying to find what stores they had and what was open. Being here during Labor Day weekend, the Coach store had a huge line up. I decided to pass and see what other stores were open. In the meantime, my sister in law needed to stop at the restroom and she said that it was 3 flights of stairs up and no elevator. It’s a problem if you are elderly or if you are pushing a stroller.
I found the Lindt store and when I walked in I was given a Lindt ball. There were all these bins full of the chocolate balls and another separate bin with the mini chocolate bars. They had different pricing for the two bins so you really need to pay attention to the signs. They had a deal on the balls, 100 for $ 30, and decided to get this since they had flavors I don’t usually see in the stores. They had citrus, coffee, hazelnut, vanilla bean and raspberry plus the usual flavors you can get in the variety pack at a regular store.
My sister in law tried using American currency but they were not accepting it. When I tried making my purchase with my debit card, their card reader wouldn’t read my card so I had to swipe it at least 5 times then I ended up trying a credit card this time and it still wasn’t reading my card. After a few more swipes it finally took. It sure was frustrating.
Went into Guess, J Crew, Tommy Hilfiger and Body Works. I didn’t see many good deals. I probably spent 30 minutes total here, which is pretty quick for me at any mall. I was also disappointed that they do not have a food court. They only have an outside café and one food truck. Make sure you don’t come here hungry.
Another thing. The mall is under the air traffic so it gets annoyingly loud whenever a plane is coming in for a landing. Hopefully when there are more stores open it will be better.

One of the most exciting thing this summer was the grand opening of the YVR Outlet; I’m sure all of us have really looked forward after waiting for 2 years. It is indeed beautiful with European designs, however I am a bit disappointed that there were only a handful of stores opened at this time. I’m really looking forward to more stores opening in the near future. Also there is only an area for pop-​up eateries and a nice-​looking café located at the center of the outlet. There will be a chinese restaurant that will be opening there, however there is no food court yet. Washrooms are clean and available. There is a skytrain station and lots of parking at the outlet.

[YVR Outlets]
As far as outlets go, quality, value, and store selection make it make it or break it. Sure, it’s nice that the storefronts have European décor but I’m here for the deals. That said, many of the stores you’d expect to find at the Premium Outlets south of the border are here — problem is, two thirds of the stores aren’t open yet. (Signs indicate many Fall 2015 openings) The ones that are open have good pricing given the state of the Canadian dollar. The biggest problem is selection. I found a fair number of items that piqued my interest but unfortunately, nothing in my size (M or L).
I wanted to avoid the crowds so I made the trip on a Wednesday evening — there must’ve been 60 people there max! There’s also a Canada line station 500 meters away which can come in handy. The one thing that bothered me was its proximity to the tarmac at YVR. Every 5 minutes, I’d have to pause my conversation while I have a front row seat watching a 747 touch down. Noise aside, I feel like this outlet has a lot of potential once all the stores open up and the novelty dies down. For now though, its not really worth a trip out unless you’re nearby.
PS: Eat before coming. Food options are limited.

I personally see this as a 4-​star mall and expect them to be one in the future, but I’ll withhold a star until they open all their stores and fix their food situation.
After reading several scything reviews from unimpressed visitors, I fully expected the worst and was contemplating skipping this visit completely. I did, however, give it a chance seeing as they seemingly put a lot of effort in opening a non-​architecturally-​generic mall. Vancouver buildings simply just don’t have a lot of character and this complex seemed so interesting in comparison.
I went the first Thursday (and the following Monday) after their grand opening, which may account for the discrepancies between my review and the ones earlier on. Some initial reports pointed that only ½ of the mall was open; but that’s simply not true. I would estimate that at least ½ or 2/​3s of the mall had running stores. The quality between these stores differ individually, here are some notes I had on each some stores as there’s no separate Unilocal page for them yet:
J.Crew Factory– I was so disappointed that they haven’t opened yet, it was part of the reason I came. They should really specify which stores are/​are not open on McArthurGlen’s website.
Armani– Terrible item selection. There are rows and rows of the same marked down clothes that I guess no one wanted. All skull and bones.
Polo Ralph Lauren– I’m not usually a fan of this brand but they have a good selection with relatively good prices. Better than most of the outlet stores I visited.
Guess– My friend found some cute stuff but the stock was unimpressive.
Coach– The line was absolutely ridiculous for a Thursday afternoon, it could’ve easily been an hour long. I certainly don’t see the appeal of coach, there must of been a huge sale/​deal.
Café Artigiano– Was located as one of the centrepieces of the big open central areas. I love sitting in this location and enjoying the ambience.
Lindt– Complete selection of the very-​popular chocolate balls (see picture), they offered us a sample of the new vanilla flavour upon entering the store. Despite being an outlet store, they weren’t particularly cheaper than anywhere else. Heads Up: The champagne ones tasted more like hard liquor than champagne. Avoid it if you mind this.
The pricing of the items wasn’t particularly cheaper than other Vancouver malls, perhaps it would have been better if this was a normal mall instead of an «outlet.» A common complaint of this mall is that they have a lacklustre and unimpressive food court, however after hours of walking around there was no food to be found except for the occasional food truck and artisan ice-​cream shop. An unwarranted complaint I see from other reviews was that the mall was placed too far form the skytrain; I completely disagree. While I don’t understand why they didn’t flip the positioning of the mall and parking lot, the under-​five-​minute walk from the train station shouldn’t cause any healthy human to break a sweat.
Unfortunately, I have to say I don’t see any potential of a 5-​star mall. Poor planning was conducted when they decided to build on a lot directly under the airport’s descent path. How am I supposed to have a positive shopping experience when every 5 minutes everyone has to take cover due to the ear-​shattering plane noise (it’s terrible, I’m not exaggerating). If you value your hearing senses at all, bring some earplugs.
TL;DR– Gorgeous architecture but in a terrible location. You might lose your hearing but it’s worth that mediocre 5% off, right?

I don’t think its worth coming here. Its small compared to the Seattle premium outlet. The size is like ¼ of Seattle Premium Outlet. But the pro is that its close, I mean its still in BC or Vancouver. Kind of…
I went on July 25 2015 and I have to say half the stores are not open yet. Not to mention even for the stores that are already opened the prices are not that great. I can find better deals in the states. Even after factoring the exchange rates, you are still better off going down to Seattle Premium Outlet.
I do like the design of the building. Its very original. But there is one thing that really annoys me how can this mall only have 1 washroom!
Would I come back. No I don’t think so. Unless a friend really want me to tag along then I will consider it. Or else NO!!!

Nothing special to see here. Move along please…
Hahahaha no, it’s pretty neat. Especially if you like to shop and look for bargains. Some of the stores were actually affordable!

Came by to check out the outlets after the intial mad rush on opening day.
Parking is plentiful in the nice large lots. Not sure if capacity will be sufficient after they open Phase 2 though. The entrance and exits to the lots are bit tricky, as there are way fewer of them than one would think. Of course, there is also the conveniently located SkyTrain station nearby.
It looks like they’re trying for a more European-​feeling version of Seattle Premium Outlets. The store selection is decent, but the variety is definitely less than SPO. Maybe this will change in the coming months. With that said, there are Puma and Lindt stores here. Yay!
One improvement this place has over SPO is the large kids’ playground on one side, as well as a few areas where one can enjoy the riverfront view. It’s a neat touch to put all those signs in the native language, but almost nobody who visits the area is going to be able to read any of them. On the other hand, one thing that was noticeably missing about this outlet was a food court. All I saw were some food trucks.
The one annoying thing about this place though — it’s directly under the landing path of one of the major runways. Every few minutes, a deafening roar covers the entire place. Kind of neat the first couple of times, but gets annoying really quickly.
Can’t really decide if I like or dislike this place just yet.

A smaller outlet with designer high end stores, most the same as hawaii and other states, however we found some different stores that we can’t find somewhere else near us:
Mountain warehouse — we found reasonable designer rain jackets to our liking.
Lindt chocolates — the only way we can buy it is through macy’s, and it is so fresh and smooth coming from the store directly. It was $ 5.50 for 8 pieces or $ 30 for 100 pieces. Being Chinese and our family being chocolate fiends, you can guess how many we bought.
the capilano tea store — they said they will only be at this outlet for 2 months.
Being very near the airport, the planes fly very low. Bathrooms are individual rooms with a full door. however you have to walk up the stairs to get to it. A lot of other stores still didn’t move in so I was a bit sad not to be able to shop in them yet. There needs to be more eateries. there was only one restaurant and a food truck servicing only fried foods.
I like how they designed it and placed lots of benches for us to rest.

Seriously, t-​shirts originally priced at $ 20 are now $ 17 is a deal? Not many deals to be had at this time. However, it is YMMV. Some 50% discounts are from very inflated prices already. Lindt gives freebie chocolates but they do not taste much like alcohol.
Add duty, taxes, gasoline (to and from), correctly calculated exchange rate and you’ll realize you’re not saving much if at all by shopping at the Premium outlets in Seattle.

Awesome stores!
Some are cheap and some aren’t.
Now that the US dollar is higher than CAD, there’s no reason to go cross the border to go the the US Outlet stores.
So glad they opened one in Richmond BC.
Time for shopping!

When things are shiny and new its very appealing, yesterday was its grand opening which according to the news was a gong show so I wanted to check it out the second day see what all the hype was about. I came right when it opened 10am on Friday. To my surprise it was already busy. Parking lot fling up quickly and tour busses as well.
I really didn’t plan on shopping just wanted to check it out. I saw a Café Artigiano in the center of the mall, bonus coffee is just what I needed. The line was super long but I had nowhere to be. Once I got my coffee, I walked around.
PROs very pretty, feels like fancy outlet malls Ive been to in the States. I guess everything new is pretty.
Location near the airport (also can be a con).
Has brands that people love. Coach, Nike, Banana Republic, Tommy, Puma, Calvin, Gap, Polo, so on typical outlet mall. I was expecting more «high end designers».
CONS lots of parking but its a gong show, the have flaggers pointing you where to park but it seems like no organization, they looked more confused. Its causing a lot of traffic in the area, if you’re headed to the airport to catch a flight give yourself extra time especially weekends.
Half of the stores are not even open.
Needs more food or coffee shops.
I know it’s fairly new and I have a feeling it will get better as the other stores open and hype dies down. If your looking for deals well this place might be for you just be patient and ready to wait in long line ups.

After much hype and excitement for the opening of Vancouver’s very own outlet, I’m rather unsatisfied by the whole experience. The disorganized staff, coupled with the unfortunate location, creates a less-​than-​pleasant environment to be shopping in. It’s not surprising that this outlet does not live up to its better counterparts in, say, USA, but the fact that this center is so ordinary in comparison makes it a sad alternative to normal shopping malls in BC.
To begin with, the location is set awkwardly near the airport and the skytrain station. It’s a little far from the skytrain to walk with huge shopping bags in your hands, but it’s also too close to justify taking a bus from the outlet to the station. When I went, the policemen told us to park in the «aviation» parking lot, which is incredibly far from the outlet itself; they explained that the outlet parking lot is already full. However, when I reached the outlet, the parking lot had plenty of space for parking. It did not make sense to me.
What’s worse is that upon arrival in the mall, I could see airplanes travelling in the sky above us. Actually, I heard the airplanes before seeing them; both incredibly loud and irritating, the airplanes were also uncomfortably close. Every half an hour or so I could hear an airplane whizzing by our heads, and I wanted to duck down and hide.
The outlet itself is limited in options; there are the mainstream brands you would expect, like Coach, Levi’s and Guess. They had a good sprinkling of sports gear, but they were lacking in shoe stores and kitchenware. Amazingly enough this outlet DOES NOT HAVE A FOOD COURT! Their ‘food court’ is a small, warehouse-​style area with shops that sold artisan muffins, churros, tacos and freshly-​ground matcha tea. It’s like a snack bar with minimal seating. Besides that, they also have a lot of food carts such as Japadog and a huge Caffe Artigiano smack-​dab in the middle of the outlet.
A lot of their stores are not open for business as well; their Italian restaurant is closed at the moment and will be open later. While this outlet has some great deals in their stores, it’s inadequate in size, choice and location. It’s definitely not a bad place to kill some time or shop, but it is a disappointment among its fellow outlets.

I went here for a grand opening today and the outlet was really packed today. We were scared of not being able to find parking and thank god there were some parking spaces. There were plenty of parking areas and felt lucky to find spot of our own.
When we first arrived here building looked really nice. The entrance part reminded me of Disney Land and everywhere else looked fancy. Washrooms were very clean. There were 3 of them and had to go upstairs to go to washroom. You can use elevators.
There were super long line ups by Polo, Coach and Armani around 3 – 4 ish. My friend was shopping around Hugo Boss and almost everywhere we went were so busy. Even Caffe Artigiano was very busy that I had to stand in long line. Some staff were all over the place from serving and making coffee. As I mentioned the 3 retail stores I’ve previously mentioned were extremely busy with very long line up.
This outlet had a play ground so family can bring their kids along. There were an orchestra playing Aladdin OST which was nice. Another good thing is there are maps in different languages for tourists to use. Also there is free Wifi throughout. It was really cool to see Under Armour, Cole Haan, Nike and Geox store.
There were things which I didn’t like such as short staff and slow service. Couldn’t shop at Coach since the line up was very long from 3pm ish even later. J Crew wasn’t even open yet and felt disappointed about this. Anyways it was super busy day here for traffic controllers, police and sales people. In my personal opinion there weren’t much stores to look at.