Surprise! Sanrio Milford

I had a bit of a surprise when I was visiting my family for Thanksgiving - I realized there was a *second* Sanrio store in Southern Connecticut! Not only is it only like 15 minutes away from the first one, but it's actually much closer to my family's house than the first one! So I'd been driving way out of my way to go to the Trumbull Mall, when I could just be going to the one like 5 minutes away. The crazy thing is that I'm this mall all the time to go to Target, but I hadn't walked over to this piece of it in ages. I found it randomly when I was checking the mall's webpage to find out the name of the toy store next to the target. If I'd ever walked over like 4 more stores, I would've run right into the Sanrio store! I guess it's actually only been there since August, but that's 4 months of Sanrio goodness I'd been missing!



As you can see, it's nice and big, tho I think it may look bigger than it actually is - it's long and narrow, and has some odd angles going on. I bet if you measured square feet it would be similar to the one in Trumbull.

I also think the Trumbull store has a slightly better selection of merchandise. I don't know if they have a slightly better buyer, or if they really both get the same stuff and it's just that the Milford store sells stuff faster. The mall in Milford is busier than the mall in Trumbull, I think.

At any rate, Sanrio now has TWO chances to take my money while I'm in CT!! >.< It's probably a good thing there's no official Sanrio store in Boston too, I shudder to think - my *room* would probably look like a Sanrio store!!

Since the Christmas stuff was already up when I was there for Thanksgiving, I couldn't resist taking some photos of the tree full of cute ornaments. (some of which came home with me, of course!)





I really like the round ornaments, but I didn't buy any because my tree is too small.





I concentrated on the round ornaments b/c I didn't buy any, but you can see Charmmy there at the bottom of the photo - my tree is full of those little plushie ornaments. (I'll post photos of my tree next)

Thru the other window you can see the giant plushies. Cute!


I think the Trumbull store also has nicer window decorations. Is it crazy that I feel bad I didn't get over to the Trumbull store too? I know it will have basically the same things, but I feel disloyal somehow! XD

While I was at the Milford store tho, I picked up this interesting little brochure about starting a Sanrio store. It looks like the stores are basically franchised, if I'm understanding things right (which I might not be! XD), which I did not know. That might explain how it happened that two stores opened within throwing distance of each other in Connecticut, but there's none at the moment in Boston! Also interesting to note is the info on how many Sanrio stores there are in the US.





The flipside gives more specific financial info. Maybe too specific if you aren't trying to open a store, but for those of you who are interested: