Garment Center Insider Shopping Tour (For Women)

My 22 year old daughter and I took a girls trip to New York. We had no idea of what to expect on this tour and I must say we were pleasantly surprised. Christina, our guide, was great. She was informative, helpful and just a lot of fun. I would highly recommend this to anyone. It was a great way to see places that we would have never seen, get great deals on designer clothes and have a lot of fun looking. Thanks for making our trip a wonderful experience. Robin McDonald

we went to NY for a mother-daughter trip and thought a tour of designer rooms would be a cool detour from retail shopping. our tour guide, Sarah, was so great! very friendly and was fully of energy. it was an awesome time. everyone in our group ended up buying something. i bought so many scarfs and jewelry! there was def something in the trip for everybody. but everyone should remember to wear walking shoes!

I signed up for this activity by myself, but felt very welcomed by our guide and the group as a whole. I felt I was the perfect customer being a middle-aged female customer. I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it so much had I been male or a teen. I was the market customer the outlets were looking for in a customer. We had more than enough time at every shop, sometimes too much time. I really loved being able to go behind the scenes of the industry and get a peek of this retail experience. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly and would love to do another tour.

While I don't think anyone should do this event expecting to go home with a new wardrobe purchased at low prices, I do think nearly anyone would thoroughly enjoy it. You don't actually get an "insider's view" of the designing process and there's a very limited number of items from which to choose, with one place out of six being just purses, one being just scarves, and the others each being a very defined style with just a couple of racks of the prior seasons clothes to choose from, mostly at prices you could probably find last season's clothes on sale for at department stores. However, if you're not hoping for a new wardrobe, and just go for the unique experience, you'll have a great time. It was one of the highlights of our trip and, even though we didn't purchase as much as I'd expected we would, we'd go again. One word of caution - they don't warn you ahead of time, but many of the places either give a discount for cash or only accept cash, so if you're planning on buying, bring plenty of cash with you.

The tour guide was freindly and nice, but did little more than escort us in and out of showrooms, trying to dump last season's rejects. There was little selection and very few sizes. It was fun to experience going into the showrooms, but overall I would say it was a big disappointment. We had more fun going on our own to Century 21 and Macys.

I would recommend it to friends

The tour was good. The guide Cristy, I believe that was her name, was really good. She made it more fun than it was. I did not like the first stores, I think the tour should start backwards.

We were given oppurtunities to visit design showrooms and purchase directly from them, something that is not available to the public. It was a lot of fun, and our guide was not only knowledgable about the showrooms we were visiting, she also pointed out the sites as we were walking about. We had a great time.

Unfortunately our guide did not know where she was going, her apprentice was much more educated on the area. You will wish you had three hours of your life back to go into stores and take advantage of the sample sales fliers that folks hand you in front of the locations where they are. Fortunately our group was small, but the guide would have been wise to provide a time limit in the stores. We ended up in one junk store that was nothing more than a cheap "Target" with clothes that were ripped and damaged but VERY cheap $5.00 shirts etc. A lot of time spent there on purely JUNK! Totally a waste of time. I believe this could be a good tour if it were tailored to something more worthwhile. I was sadly disappointed. Being a walking tour, we did have a lady that tripped on the sidewalk and fell. I was amazed to learn that New Yorkers are concerned and polite peope after all. Many men in suits stopped to help and showed genuine concern in their hectic lives. Traveling as a woman alone, I was concerned about if something occurred, would anyone stop and notice, or would I be the car alarm that goes off with no one taking notice. So all in all, I fell more in love with NYC, and I would highly recommend the other Zerve tours, but this one needs fine tuning.

My sister & I met in NYC and this was planned as part of our trip. We had SO MUCH FUN! Our guide Aimee was delightful and took us to some great places. The other ladies (and one trooper of a guy) were all sweethearts and we mixed well together. We met a couple of the designers and one actually "dressed" us. She was great. Came home with some real treasures. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.