Clicks and Mortar at 5 St Mary's Gate (the end of Market Street going onto Deansgate) in Manchester city centre, is a cool and innovative pop-up store from Amazon with a concept of "giving online traders their first taste of high-street presence), which in the days of the high-street seeing stores vanishing, and the sad inevitable decline is actually refreshing to see. Many of my reviews come from stores, even though I find the low prices of retailers such as Amazon inviting, but combining my love of retail and online shopping in one hub, this makes it the perfect place to mark my landmark milestone 2500th Yelp review. The store is a little small and as a pop-up until the end of the year, it isn't a bold, modern store with a lot of time put into the decor and layout, but that doesn't mean the store is terrible - actually it is the opposite, they manage to pack just enough into the small space they have from multiple traders from genuine leather men's products including cases to fruit juices, cosmetics and peanut butter. I did find a lack of organisation in the store, there was a leaflet which appeared to be a little vague, but having more of a sign "try me" on the sample juices, or perhaps a store manager to oversee everything, rather than just staff working each individual stall would have worked a lot better. They do have Amazon lockers here, and although they are all over Manchester including around two or three sets in the Arndale, one in the Co-op, and then the collection points around the city, the location of these is really useful for Deansgate especially if you want to avoid the mega busy Arndale on a Saturday (It would also apply on a Sunday too, but sadly for a bizarre reason this store isn't open.) The Amazon lockers are regularly full here compared to the others, which might be because they just opened a few days ago and people using them haven't had time to use the lockers yet (picking up their items). I really liked the Torro stand more than the others because this is a product I am familiar with, so it was a pleasant surprise to see them here as I already own one of their phone-cases, I've had it now for around a month but the case has already become easy to scratch, speaking to their salesman here who seemed really friendly, he gave me some advice to fix it as well as showing me the material they use showing how durable it is, and we were both puzzled at why it did scratch, he told me he has seen cases returned in that condition, but did not offer to swap mine over - this is understandable but surely if he's been offered cases returned in this condition, he could have done the same to me? It would have been great if there was more detail perhaps online on when and where and who would be coming to this store, and perhaps if it was bigger too, as the back of the store near the Amazon lockers is a rather narrow, tight-squeeze but with this the first of 10 cleverly named "Clicks and Mortar" stores by Amazon, they've really set the barrier high and despite some flaws with the layout and knowing more about the traders (they change every two weeks). A great concept worthy of a solid four-star rating as I look to add to this review as the store changes in two-weeks time, where I hope some of the issues are ironed out and are just simple teething issues after opening just a few days a go. read more

Clicks and Mortar - Pop-up Shops Near Me - Manchester, XGM

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