Shopping in the Medina requires planning, some patience, and an adventurous spirit. My wife Rachel and I chose to travel to Fez for our first trip to Morocco because of not only the famous riads found within (Riad Salam Fez, for example), but also to shop.
Morocco is typically known for Berber rugs, lanterns, mosaic (also known as Zellige), Argan oil, metal work, and furniture. Several months prior to our trip I began to develop a budget to control and forecast cost, and a prioritized shopping list that indicates a price objective for each item. Check out the post on budgeting to get more info and examples.
Make a shopping list and a spending goal for each item on that list. The Example Budget above highlights my bargaining goals. No prices are marked on any items for sale in the Medina, so you must assign your own value, then bargain like hell to get as close as you can. I developed these prices based upon numerous discussion threads, or by finding like items on US websites and cutting the price by 75%.
The locals expect you to bargain! Do not accept the first price and if you begin the process, make sure you are willing and capable of buying the item. It is alright to ask for a general starting price, but if you start haggling, then they will assume you want it and go straight into sell mode. I used the “walk out” to save a ton of money on purchases. If the vendor could not meet the price I wanted, I would thank them for their time, then leave. More often than not, before I could take 3 steps the vendor would lower the price. I also made and printed out a shopping guide since internet is not available in the medina stalls.
Making your own shopping guide. Get some pictures together of what you want, then make a separate page for your spending goals and notes on vendor prices. My wife kept ours out the entire time, a small booklet in which to catalogue offers and locations. It saved us a lot of money. You can also use this to jot down prices when you initially enter a shop and ask a vendor for their best price on an item. Compare each store’s “best price” or “meilleur prix” to find a good baseline of what you can expect to spend without bargaining very much. Some simple French shopping phrases are good to include, as well.
Read on to see the price range I achieved for some of the items listed in the above budget. We did not get everything we were after due to time and not wanting to spend a day at the post office. Overall, I got pretty close to my objectives, and in hindsight if I had another day I could have gotten even better prices.
Of course, you have to consider the cost of staying per day verses savings and remember its about getting what you want and having a good time. If you hate haggling or are not comfortable being firm on demands, do your shopping on the internet and go look at the nice buildings instead.
Rugs: Obtained a 2 x 2.5 meter Beni Ourain rug with high pile for close to $700. The quality of these rugs was very good, judging from all advice we found online on the subject. When looking underneath the rug, you don’t want to see uniform perfection. That indicates the rug was machine made, and we were looking for handmade rugs. The salesmen wanted us to feel the rugs with our feet, touch the material, and welcomed us inspecting them. They didn’t rush us. They served us tea and negotiated without rudeness. That is what you want to look for.
La Maison d’Art Berbère | 18, Chrablyenne, Fès Médina. 30200 | 05 35 63 63 53
Lanterns: Bought two very nice, large lanterns and some other smaller items for around $130. I spent more here because these lanterns had real stained glass and thicker metal. Many of the vendors on the streets have thin metal and plastic paneling, rather than glass. If you don’t see what you like in the first shop, or the second or third, just keep looking.
Art Antik Chez Al Azzouzi | Not online, and we didn’t get a business card or write down the address, but it is located about 50 meters SE of Zaouia de Moulay Idriss.
Metal Work: In the incredible Sefarine/Seffarine metal working district of the Medina, we bought a nice brass serving tray from a small vendor and tea kettle from an even smaller back alley vendor for $60, together.
We were unable to purchase any leather products due to time and the unwillingness of the vendor to lower their prices. The leather shops around the tanneries receive hundreds of tourists a day and didn’t seem to have much of an incentive to work with us on price.
I was quoted $650 for 2 small poufs, 1 large pouf, and two pairs of babouches, which based upon my research was outrageous. (When we were touring Dar Finn, a nice woman who worked there named Maggie confirmed my suspicion that $640 was a ridiculous price for these items together.) He mentioned several times that these items were very high quality camel leather but I wasn’t having it. I do not know much about camel leather, so that could have been a great price, but I had to remember to stay on budget and prioritize!
My wife and I had a great time shopping and haggling with the vendors. Did we pay too much? Perhaps, but we paid what we thought was fair for the items, and we love what we got.
-Mike
Project Riad 