Joburg Shopping Festival to bring great bargains

The City of Gold is preparing to host the upcoming annual Joburg Shopping Festival taking place from 28 July to 9 August.

In its third year, the festival will see five malls having impressive sales over a 13-day period. Sandton City, the Oriental Plaza, East Rand Mall and Rosebank Mall have all been confirmed as the malls participating later next month.

Marang Setshwaelo, publicist at Dreamcatcher Multimedia said this year the festival would be much bigger. The event started out with two malls and that number has grown to five. “It’s an opportunity for Joburgers to look for bargains across the board, but it’s also for internationals too,” she said.

“The malls that are involved will be having sales of electronics, clothing, and furniture across the board. We will be announcing which shops are participating closer to the event.”

James Delaney, founder and CEO of the Joburg Shopping Festival, says the intention is to attract more tourists from the rest of the region and the rest of the continent to Gauteng to shop. “It’s a tourism initiative, that’s the idea behind it and it’s also about economic development,” he said.

With the support of Gauteng Tourism Authority, the City of Joburg and UnionPay International, the focus is on exploring the city and the region through shopping. “We don’t want visitors to go to one mall. They have to go and experience the different malls, different shopping precincts,” Delaney said.

“They must go to Vilakazi Street, go downtown to find and shop and buy different things because it isn’t the same wherever you go.”

David Tlale, renowned South African fashion designer, will also be taking part in the festival and some of his exclusive garments will be on sale. He encouraged guests, saying it was about time South Africans invested in their own talent, keeping the wealth on local soil. “Let us believe in ourselves; let us believe in the creativity we have; let us believe that a product proudly made in South Africa can compete with Marc Jacobs, with Kenneth Cole and with Gucci. We are not going to become them but we have to be authentic and be proudly South African,” said Tlale.