The Art of War (and Shopping) in the Souks of Agadir

 Let’s get one thing straight: if you try to haggle in Marrakesh, you might as well try to negotiate with a mountain. It’s not going to move. The shopkeepers there are seasoned generals in the tourist trade, and you, my friend, are a fresh-faced recruit. But take a three-hour drive to Agadir, and the game changes entirely.

Agadir, I hear you scoff. But Agadir has a secret: two souls. There's Souk El Had, the sprawling, tourist-friendly maze, and then there's Souk Inezgane, the place where Moroccans actually buy their stuff. This is where the real magic happens.

My quest was specific. I wanted a size 16 mannequin. In England, they’re all whippet-thin—a statement of fact, not a personal preference. I found the mannequin district in the souk and was immediately ambushed by a squadron of eager sellers. The lead guy quoted a price that was so laughable, I just walked away. Which leads to my first major tip: Sometimes, the best move is to leave.

I returned a few hours later. The ambush squad was gone, the shop shuttered. So I loitered, looking suspiciously like a man who wanted to buy a plus-sized doll. Then, my lucky break: some local shopkeepers arrived to buy male mannequins. With no one else around, a different worker sold them theirs. I saw the real price. He even wrote it on a box! My original offer hadn’t been insulting; it had been too close for comfort, which was why they’d shut me down. I pounced, bought my mannequin, and marched triumphantly through the souk to the bus stop, my new, curvaceous companion in tow, drawing more looks than a free pastry sample.

 

Another weapon in my haggling arsenal? Boredom. Shopkeepers are often bored. I make conversation, even when I don’t want to buy anything. I once asked about sheer, embroidered shirts like the djellabas. "Nobody sells them," they said, "but a tailor can make them." And just like that, I was whisked to a fabric shop where the guys were thrilled to meet a tourist buying sheer chiffon—a first for them, I’m sure. I got original shirts made just for me.

Always be aware of the audience. In Souk El Had, I haggled hard for a specific pair of raffia shoes. I walked away from a stubborn seller. As I was leaving through the main gate hours later, a shopkeeper from a nearby stall, who had heard the entire earlier negotiation, called out and sold me a pair for my price.

And my favourite technique? The numbers game. Haggle for one item. If you don’t get the price, sigh and say, "Oh, and I was going to buy two." They now know the price for one is too high, and the game for two begins anew. It’s a beautiful, chaotic dance.

The moral of the story? Know your battlefield. Be patient, be observant, and never underestimate the power of just standing around with a plus-size mannequin. It’s how you find the real price—and a great story.

 The Recovery Agent for Lost Memories

My name is Andrew, and I have spent the better part of my adult life being the world’s most enthusiastic, yet economically useless, souvenir hunter. My travels weren't about seeing landmarks; they were about falling in love with things. Deep, profound, "I-will-never-love-anything-this-much-again" love.

I remember sitting in a Delhi chai shop, watching other travellers stumble in, flushed with victory, clutching receipts for huge, cumbersome boxes they were shipping home. They’d bought entire marble tabletops, stacks of tapestries, life-sized brass peacocks. I sipped my sweet, chai and thought, “What a dreadful hassle.” It never once occurred to me that I, too, should buy the things I adored.

In a bustling market in Marrakech, I once clutched a hand-woven cotton mat to my chest, tears in my eyes, whispering to the artisan, “You have not just made a mat; you have woven the very soul of the Atlas Mountains.” He nodded patiently, waiting for me to buy it. I did not. I took a dramatic photo of it, sighed about the impermanence of beauty, and left. That mat haunts my dreams.

I was the king of the singular, sentimental, and ultimately tragic purchase. In Tehran in the 80s, I found myself in a carpet shop where the owner was desperate for American dollars. I could have bought a king’s ransom in exquisite Persian rugs for a song. What did I do? I bought one. A single, beautiful carpet. I gave it to my mother. A lovely gesture, sure, but I left a fortune in craftsmanship on that floor for the lack of a larger suitcase and a shred of mercantile instinct.

Later, after an arduous trek into the mountains of Darjeeling, I found a family weaving magnificent Tibetan carpets. They were dirt cheap. I could have funded their children’s education for a year. I bought one. Just one. I gave it to a friend as a housewarming gift. He loved it. He also, apparently, loved the company of moths, who devoured it with the relish of a gourmand at a Michelin-starred restaurant. I had trekked for days to provide a feast for insects.

The breaking point, or rather the making point, was my daughter, Silje. She inherited my travel bug, but mercifully, also a fully functioning prefrontal cortex.

She watched me sigh over a photo of that moth-eaten carpet.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, sipping her coffee. “You find amazing things handmade by talented artisans. You have an emotional connection to them. You then... buy one, or none, and give them away to be devoured by pests. You are a philanthropist of regret.”

“You simplify a complex artistic dilemma,” I replied.

“It’s not a dilemma, Pappa. It’s a failure to capitalize on beauty. It’s a tragedy in three acts: discovery, admiration, and abandonment.”

She saw not a lifetime of regret, but a business plan. A very specific, slightly neurotic business plan.

“Right,” she said, closing the laptop lid on the moth-eaten carpet with finality. “We start a shop. For all the things you loved and left. For all the people who, like you, watched those boxes in Delhi and thought ‘what a hassle,’ and are now kicking themselves.”

And so, La Mode Clothing was born. Now, instead of just wistfully describing the “vibrant threads of an intricately woven shirt” I saw in Guatemala, we actually sell it. Instead of trying to mail a solid teak coffee table from Bali piece-by-piece in padded envelopes (a dark period I don’t like to talk about), we use a reliable shipping partner. We embrace the hassle so you don’t have to.

Silje handles the shops, the logistics, and stopping me from trying to pay for things with interpretive dance. I handle the “quest,” which is just a fancy word for me finally buying all the beautiful things I want, but now with a credit card and a mission.

Driven by my own history of regret, we’ve even launched our “Request a Rescue” service. If someone messages us, saying, “I had the most amazing wooden bowl in a little shop in Helsinki ten years ago and I’ve thought about it every day since!” Challenge accepted. If I’m in Finland I will find that bowl, and become a souvenir-seeking superhero.

I’m not just a tourist anymore. I’m a recovery agent for lost memories. And I’m finally making up for that room full of Persian carpets I left in Tehran. One beautiful, meticulously vetted, fairly-traded piece at a time.