A Bizarre Bazaar!

When I heard “Grand Bazaar“, I thought of a small market being run in the basement of a church. Was I in for a surprise when I visited the bazaar in Istanbul! It was more like a small city full of shops, vendors, shoppers, and colour.

Inside, there are many different things which can be bought, some made in Turkey. There was Turkish Delight, spices, scarves, Turkish carpets, souvenirs, clothing, leather, jewelry, and hand painted ceramics, to name a few things! It reminded me of the medina in Morocco; it was full of alleys and was really hard to find your way around.

Some of the items that can be bought

Lanterns made in Turkey

Looking down an alley of shops

The vendors in the Grand Bazaar are something else! Since it’s winter and there aren’t as many tourists, the vendors try every tactic they know to get business. My favourites are: one vendor called out to us and said, “Christmas is almost here and Santa Claus isn’t coming, so you should buy your presents here”, another vendor stood in the way, gave us high fives, then tried to sell to us. All the vendors also claim that their items are half price and the right way is into their shops. Although it isn’t high season, there were quite a few people in the bazaar, so I bet it must be really difficult to move through there in the summer months.

The locals don’t shop in the Grand Bazaar because it is very touristic. They shop on the street markets where there are restaurants, bakeries, and beautiful dresses. Personally, I don’t prefer shopping for clothing, but the dresses look so amazing, I think I could make an exception!

The Grand Bazaar is an amazing place to visit, and although Istanbul is full of many beautiful buildings, I think the bazaar is my all time favourite for its atmosphere, its goods, and its fun people!

Oliver here…now…let’s say you wanted to buy a carpet…

Beautiful carpets…

…silk…wool…

You might experience something like this when walking through the Bazaar:

Hello friends!  Where are you from?  Oh, Canada!  I was in Canada last year!  I went to Edmonton for a carpet selling convention.  Do you know about carpets?  Please, come in and enjoy some Turkish Hospitality!  When people visit my house, or when people visit your house, you enjoy conversation.  Perhaps you serve coffee, we serve apple tea.  Please, come and learn about carpets.  If you want to buy, ok, if not, that’s ok too…we will still be friends.

This is how the process starts.  You make new friends, drink apple tea, and perhaps you walk out with a carpet or 3!

As far as souvenirs go, it doesn’t get more genuine than buying an authentic Turkish carpet in Turkey.  We all learned a lot about carpets:

• They can be wool on wool, meaning that both the strings that are knotted and the vertical strings which the knots are tied to are made from wool. The wool can be from sheep, lambs, or angora.
• They can be silk on silk – meaning that all of the threads used are silk
• They can be silk on cotton – meaning that the underlying vertical threads are cotton, and that silk threads are knotted on the cotton.
• For wool carpets, the best dyes for colour are plant-based – saffron, tobacco, indigo etc.
• For silk carpets, it is necessary to use chemical dyes
• The carpet shops sell old and new carpets. Older carpets are more expensive because they absolutely are dyed with plant-based dyes…you cannot substitute for chemical dyes in old carpets.  We saw some carpets which were over 50 years old and they looked as good as new!

The shop we visited was a government-certified shop, meaning that if we had any issues after the sale there was an official process to lodge a complaint.  As a result, there is a higher level of comfort that the products have the level of quality being presented.  Still, it is important to do some background research so you know what to look for when buying a carpet.

How does the process work?

The opening for this section is pretty common – they try to engage with you and build a common connection.  You then go into the shop (if you decide that’s what you want to do!) and drink some tea, ask questions about carpets (what are the different kinds, what’s the difference between sheep, lamb, and angora wool, silk vs. wool etc.).  And then they begin bringing out the carpets.

It goes something like this:

Seller: my colleague is going to show you some carpets, different styles, sizes, colours.  You just say if you like it or not.  For yes, you say “evet”, for no you say “haier”.

Then the carpets start flying!

Before you know it there are 15 or 20 carpets in front of you…all the ones you said “evet” to!  Now you need to further eliminate carpets until you get down to 4 or 5 that you might actually consider to purchase.

Katina was our master negotiator.  The rugs we were looking at were approximately 2’ x 3’, angora wool.

The negotiations went like this:

Seller: I am going to make you a good offer for the 3 carpets you have selected.

Katina: Three?!! We were considering to buy one, and now we are buying three?!

Seller: Well, you know if you buy 1, you pay the full price.  If you buy 2, the second one is practically free. If you buy 3, well the first two pay for the third one.  That’s how it works.

Katina: Still, we weren’t expecting to pay this much.

Seller: Come, we are friends.  Have some more apple tea.  I will make you a super offer which you won’t believe…here you go… (on a calculator in US Dollars)

Katina: (shocked look on her face)…I cannot pay this much.  I think we need to go for a walk…

Seller: ok, what offer can you make me?  I have to make a little bit of profit…I have a family to feed…

Katina: I understand – we have 3 kids with us that we need to feed.  If we pay this much for the carpets then they will not be able to eat for the next 2 days!

And so it went for 2 hours!

More important than the purchase of the carpets was the experience we all had in participating in the purchase.  Mikhaila, Zoe, and Katherine all participated in the selection of the carpets and got to witness the negotiation process.  We experienced some of the different sales techniques commonly used when making other purchases.

1. I am your friend…come on and help me out!
2. I have a family to feed…I need to make a very small profit.
3. Why are you wasting my time? You have taken up 2 hours of my time and you’re not buying?
4. They also go out of their way to keep you in the shop. If you want to “go for a walk to talk about the purchase” they will do everything they can to keep you there. In our case the seller left the room and let us discuss.  As soon as you leave the shop they lose control over the situation in a sense.

We have seen each of these approaches when buying larger-priced items, whether a car, furniture, or the most infamous “time-share presentation”!

In the end we bought 3 beautiful carpets at about 1/3 the cost of the initial offer.

In our experience in Turkey, the salesman focused on the first two techniques mentioned above, and less of the third.  The seller did go out of his way to keep us in the shop (#4 above).  This was a great opportunity to provide all three girls with exposure to these life skills in a real-world situation which will serve them well in the future.  You simply cannot do this in a classroom!