They come from all over Colombia to this shopping center that opens 24 hours a day and has made early mornings the best opportunity to do New Year's shopping
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Wilson Cuervo arrived at three in the morning at Gran San, the country's most important collection and purchase-sale center for affordable clothing. He carries three bundles of clothes between Jeans, jackets, blouses, shirts and one or two dresses. His purpose is to sell it at his store in San Andresito, in Popayán. The journey doesn't matter: he arrived and left by plane and the merchandise he just bought is taken to him by truck and arrives in a couple of days. With those almost 20 million pesos in clothes, Wilson already made his December.
Video: Gustavo Marquez.
But it is not only a shopping center for businessmen who buy bundles and bundles of clothes. The ordinary Bogotano, the humble and the less humble also make Gran San the place where they dress in fashion, with good quality and reasonable prices. It is also the place where the lower strata buy Christmas pints because on December 24 and 31, poor or rich, they always premiere something.
From December 14 to 24, the Gran San will have a permanent early morning; its doors will not close so that customers do not have a problem doing their Christmas shopping. Photo: Leonel Cordero
It's 6:30 in the morning. It's Wednesday morning, a fair that takes place twice a week in this place to buy and sell a lot of clothes wholesale. But unlike the other Wednesday mornings, today a commercial marathon begins. The Gran San will not close its doors at any time from this December 14 until next Christmas 24. According to Diana Marcela Álvarez, the newly appointed administrator of the shopping center, at this time about nine thousand people have entered since two in the morning, the time the doors opened. Today, says the administrator, 30,000 people can easily enter.
All the clothes sold in Gran San are nationally made, factories from Medellín, Cali and Bogotá are present in this shopping center. Photo: Leonel Cordero.
Patricia Gómez, a women's clothing seller, has been working in Gran San for 15 years. She tells, from inside her store, that five million pesos can be sold early one day, and that is one of the least sold, because the kings of the business are those who sell jeans, who quintuple their numbers. Jeans are the king of goods at this popular mall, but all manner of clothing is found here. There are casual, elegant, informal and formal clothes. In Gran San you can find everything from simple t-shirts that can cost 15,000 pesos to elegant gala dresses. And everything is national clothing. Some garments arrive from large factories in Medellín and Cali and others are made in Bogotá. They arrive directly from the factory to the Great San and that is why they are cheap, because the intermediaries are eliminated. Here there are clothes for children, adolescents and adults; grandfathers and grandmothers also have places to shop in this large three-story mall with 708 stores.
Diana Marcela Álvarez has been the new administrator of the Gran San shopping center for a month. Her initiative is to join with the other merchants to make San Victorino a super power of national fashion. Photo: Leonel Cordero.
Not only vendors make a killing in December. Those who take care of the hundreds of cars that take turns taking turns on the neighboring sidewalks, or the coteros that load the bundles of purchased clothes and take them to the clients' vehicles, also make their December. The cotero receives five thousand pesos per loaded package. On a good early morning they can end up with more than 200 thousand pesos in their pocket. Those who take care of the cars can square one day out of a hundred thousand. During the first eleven months of the year in the Gran San two or three people can work per store, about two thousand employees, but in the early morning days or in the December season this number is doubled to attend to the avalanche of clients who arrive at the place. In December the Great San generates more than five thousand jobs.
In the Gran San Shopping Center there are 708 clothing stores, on early mornings there are 400 jobs that sell all kinds of clothing and for all ages and styles: Photo: Leonel Cordero.
In the Christmas season, in the aisles that are bursting at the seams, buyers are easily confused with sellers. On normal days, the merchants serve within the 708 premises that are in the place; but on a day like today, these formal premises are joined by some 400 improvised points installed in corridors and common areas. Between local owners and their employees they add up to around four thousand people; without counting the administrative part of the place, the surveillance, the operatives and all those who have made the Great San function like this for more than 10 years. And, above all, that it is the place of economic fashion, with prices ranging from 15,000 pesos to 100,000, and a billion pesos are sold, which is during the Christmas season.
