An invitation arrived for me the other day to join The Great Singapore Sale shopping challenge. Aww, just my kind of challenge :D. The Singapore Tourism Board paired me and Diana Rikasari together and I instantly knew that this was going to be FUN!.
We arrived in Singapore on Friday afternoon, had lunch and scoured the malls for the greatest savings. We came there to win, so we scoured the malls like there was no tomorrow.
Here’s the challenge rules: We will be given $1000 for shopping and $50 for transportation. We have to find discounted items and the team with the greatest savings wins. Saving = Actual price – Sale Price. We also have to buy the items in three precincts and shop for at least 3 items in each of the precincts. In addition to that, we also have to finish a challenge in each precint.
Our first visit for the research was Vivo City. We knew we had to skip high street stores like Zara and Top Shop because the most sale there is probably 70%. We want to find stuff that was at least 85% off for a good chance of winning the competition. What we had to find was a store that sells multi-brand items. At Tangs Vivo City, we found shoes that were priced at $9, on sale from $99. We planned to buy at least 15 of them so we can save $1450 for having spent only $145. Not bad at all for a start!.
In the second precint to choice was between Marina Square or City Link Mall and we chose Marina Square. We found shoes at Novo for $5 from $159. That’s like 96% discount. Woohooo. We checked some of the jewelry and watches store in search for the best deals. Of course, we had our notebook and calculator with us all the time..:D. In the third precinct the choice was between Sommerset313, Wisma Atria and Centrepoint Mall, all located at Orchard. We decided to just concentrate on Wisma Atria..and we did find Calvin Klein shoes (Yes shoes again) at 86% off.
The next day before the race started we walked around Wisma Atria again and boy were we glad we went back there. We found one store that sold a lot of stuff at $70, marked down from $920..:)).
So the race finally started at 14.30. Our planned route was:
1. Wisma Atria
2. Marina Square
3. Vivo City
4. Challenge in Vivo City.
5. Challenge in Merlion Park.
6. Challenge in Sommerset.
The starting line. Three, Two, One…Goooo!
Here’s our picture at the first store in Wisma Atria level 2, right across Bakerzin. This store has so many shoes (Jessica Simpson, Steve Madden, JLO, etc ) for $70, marked down from $300 and dresses as well as blazers from Anne Klein also at $70, marked down from $920.
Second stop was Marina Square and we went there by Taxi. The line for a taxi is always long in Singapore on the weekend so we had no choice but to come to the first people lined up and plead to them to give the taxi to us and we gave them M&Ms for a trade :D.
Next stop was Vivo City. We didn’t have the energy to carry the bags anymore so we just dragged them like they were four wheelers.
Picture matching!. This was the first task we did after we got all of the goods. And then we went on to the second challenge, which was to have our polaroid picture taken in Merlion park. The taxi line was even longer in Vivo city so we used our M&M trick again 😀
This was the last challenge, the choice was either wall climbing in Centrepoint or decorating the cake in Somerset313 and we chose the last one.
That’s it…were done!!. On to the Finish Line.
We tried hard to run again. It would be sweet if we were the first to arrive. At this time, I was already out of breath and close to fainting.
Yess, we did it!! We were the first to arrive. We spent 2.20 hours out of the 4 hours given. Very Efficient!.
Interviewed by Trans 7
Chilling with our chaperon at Cosmo Bistro next to the tabulation booth while waiting for the calculation.
Some pictures and the ugly shoes we bought..:D. Since we came to win, we didn’t shop for the things we like, we just bought things that were heavy on discount. Now we have like 30 pairs of ugly shoes 😀
The winner was announced at 8.30 and we won third place. That’s when the fun part was starting to go downhill. If you have been following our Twitter, you already know about this news but we haven’t disclosed the details. I will in the next post. Stay tuned..:D
Click here to read Diana Rikasari story about this challenge.
