Thursday, December 8, 2005

Mexican shoppers spend $1M day here

Tucson, Phoenix vie for business

SUSAN CARROLL

The Arizona Republic

Aracely Flores Paz, a pretty 22-year-old with oversize Jackie-O sunglasses, saunters through the food court at the Tucson Mall, completely at home.

She and 19-year-old friend Alba Diaz Varron order Subway sandwiches and start outlining their shopping list.

Flores wants one of those cute new jackets with the furry fringe.

Diaz wants the perfect black purse.

They are four hours away from their hometown of Hermosillo, Son., but they make it clear that this mall is their mall.

And that makes Tucson business leaders very happy.

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This holiday season, Arizona retailers are wooing Mexican shoppers as never before by catering to their habits, using multimedia advertising and even putting on fashion shows.

The coveted demographic spends an estimated $1 million a day in Tucson, according to the Tucson-Mexico Trade Office.

Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management, found that Mexican tourists brought close to $1.6 billion into the Arizona economy in 2001, the most recent year for which statewide data are available.

Tucson has a distinct advantage over Phoenix because Mexicans can simply use Border Crossing Cards, also called laser visas, for short visits to Arizona's border region.

Still, shopping centers from Tucson to Scottsdale are competing for Mexicans' business, some offering exclusive discounts to loyal shoppers and Spanish 101 classes for employees.

One upscale mall in north Tucson has even started airing infomercials in Mexico.

"It's definitely our No. 1 inbound market in Tucson," said Jill Harlow, group marketing manager for General Growth Properties, which runs the Tucson Mall.

She estimated that about one-third of the mall's sales are to Mexican clients such as Flores and Diaz.

Big spenders

Flores has been coming to the Tucson Mall with her family for as long as she can remember, she said.

Every few months, her whole family would come up and shop for back-to-school clothing in the fall, swimsuits in the summer.

As Flores got older and could drive, she came up more often to shop, enjoying going to trendy stores she couldn't find at home, including Charlotte Russe, which gears its merchandise toward teenagers.

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