Some people travel to go shopping. Some go for the sightseeing. Some people travel the world just for the food. What’s most important for me when I travel the world is the experiences. If you follow me online, you know that I’m rarely home. Home for me is frequently on an airplane traversing the world from place to place. As you can imagine, I’ve been to and through countless airports in my travels, but on my most recent trip to Sydney, even as a seasoned traveler, I was stopped in my tracks by their Duty Free Store. The Heinemann Tax & Duty Free Store was as much of a must-visit destination as the various tourist locations in Australia. I was absolutely blown away. I even made a video to show you guys just how crazy the experience was! Most layovers, I find myself sitting in the lounge and trying to kill time. Even if I take some time to browse and walk around the shopping available, I’m usually done within 15 minutes tops! The Heinenmann Tax & Duty Free Store was incredible. You can tell each section was carefully curated. The staff actually explained to me that the store displays are inspired by Sydney’s iconic landscapes, with the displays signifying the bush, the suburbs, and the coastal regions of Sydney. Watch my video below to see it!
Click on my video to see a tour of the Heinemann Tax & Duty Free Store!
The Heinemann Tax & Duty Free Store is a shopping destination in itself. It’s an extremely modern and contemporary shopping destination with over 28,000 products. There’s high-end, low-end, local, international brands and products perfectly curated into a shopping experience. Hard to do I’d imagine considering the store spans over 86,111 square feet! The whole store was essentially multiple stores and food options combined into one. Just the mere sight of fragrances, cosmetics, skincare, wine and liquor, technology, fashion, jewelry, watches and sunglasses was a lot to take in. And it didn’t stop there. There were pop-ups that kept changing. I stayed for less than 48 hours in Sydney and the pop-up sections on the day I arrived were completely different from the day that I left!
The luxury brands were fun to walk through. The best part was that the staff wasn’t snooty. They welcomed me browsing and even encouraged me to play with the items and try everything on! There was Fendi, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ermenegildo Zegna, Bally, Jimmy Choo, MCM, Longchamp, Montblanc, Hermes, among a long list of others. I really enjoyed the large glass window at Tiffany’s where you could see the planes outside take off and land. What a cool touch!
The store has special limited edition travel exclusives and even collaborate with big brands to release limited edition products up to a week before they are released anywhere else in the world. If you take a look at the video, you’ll see a limited edition a Jack Daniel’s bottle that I was eyeing. It came with a previously unreleased Frank Sinatra song. How cool! They also had a Givenchy lipstick I’ve had my eyes on for awhile now in stock. It’s one of those items that’s constantly sold out, but was in full stock there. This particular lipstick is very unique in that it shows up as a different color on every individual’s lips.
One of the items I picked up as souvenirs for friends and family was Next 88’s Australia-made macadamia nut shortbread cookies. The cookies are packaged in collectable tins inspired by the road sign warnings of the Australia’s kangaroos, koalas, emus, echidnas and crocodiles. That was such a nice local trinket to bring home. On top of that, I loved how the number 8 was part of the packaging. Although, I’m a Chinese-American, I really enjoyed that extra touch since 8 is a number that Chinese consider lucky. More importantly for me, I felt like this was a great gift that appealed to where I was and also had the little Chinese touch with the 8’s! Classy and a local Austrlian product!
I also loved the section with all the local Australian products. It was one of my favorite parts of The Heinemann Tax & Duty Free Store. Australian jerky, Vegemite, alcohol, trinkets, etc. I had a hoot checking out the kangaroo scrotum that was made into a keychain or bottle opener! It made for the ultimate gag gift. I was only in Sydney for less than 48 hours and since my mom used to live there, I made sure to stop by the typical must-stops like Manly Beach, Circular Quay, Opera House, Harbour Bridge, and Chinatown. But seriously the Heinemann Tax & Duty Free Store is a destination that is worthy of being added to the after mentioned list.
It really reminded me of fast shopping and quick service I get when I’m traveling through Asia. They don’t mess around. I was having fun playing around with a Christian Dior Virtual Reality set. Every time I turned around, there was someone who wanted to chat with me. Not judgmental at all. I hate salespeople that follow you around. But everyone was friendly and wanted to make sure you knew just how awesome this place was. Malls should pay attention.
Heinemann is such a custom, hyper-local retail experience. I loved that there were so many Chinese speakers around. Sometimes when you travel, it’s hard to shop because you feel like you can’t ask questions in your native tongue. God knows there’s a bunch of airports that aren’t as kind to their non-English speaking customers. Ahem, LAX. Heinemann had over 500 employees so every corner you turned there was someone to help. The best part was how kind they were. I literally walked into Fendi and the salespeople just wanted to talk to me and not hound me to see if I was buying something.
With Sydney being such a huge travel gateway for Asian air travel, it’s nice to see that Sydney Airport and Heinemann are properly responding as a truly international marketplace. And they are still expanding! I can’t wait until my next trip in town. There’s still more shops to come! For those who prefer to shop online, there’s the option to order pre-ordered up to 12 hours before your flight and pick up at one of the many Duty Free Shops.
P.S. I’m really crossing my fingers that I win the Lotus. Heinemann was running a contest while I was there. If you spend over $150, you were automatically entered into a drawing to win a free Lotus. Fingers crossed!