San Diego Marketplace

Most of the stores are moving to 54^th and El Cajon, including code 1 jewelry. They will have a grand opening on sep 25, 2015.

Review updated to none star because the store I use to get hats at is no longer there. Now this place sucks. This review is based on baseball hats. I have a huge hat collection and this place feeds my hat addiction. I only buy new era hats and thanks to them my head looks good. They have the best selection on hats…

this review is specifically for S HONG DESIGN aka the Asian lady on the far right of the market place.
I have been going to Su and Frank for however long for all of my printing and embroidery needs but have been let down time and time again.
I’ve become a regular to the point where at her busiest times, I would help other customers fill out their forms for her and she would entrust me to do so, if that doesn’t tell you how often I go there.
although they are usually nice and apologetic, they are beyond unprofessional and I will never be returning here again. as I would advise all of my friends, sorority sisters, and anyone who takes the time to read Unilocal reviews not to go here.
I came in two weeks before my sorority event, which is well over enough time to get my items done and was called the day they were due that they would not be done. Su called me on my phone yelling at me because I had replied to her text expressing that it was unprofessional of her not to have my items done. she then missed the next agreed deadline. at this point became ridiculous. what kind of business sets a pick up date but cannot meet it? you shouldn’t have taken my money then. (which was an order over $ 100) the day of my sorority formals, she only did not have my order ready, but a number of my sisters orders done and ended up having to deliver our items to our hotel but was still missing items.
I have recently discovered KOS DESIGN in the middle back of the market place that is not only more organized, but finished my embroidery within two days. I also went to the other lady on the left side near the entrance as they printed my shirts right Infront of my eyes. all for the same price!
DO NOT GO TO S HONG DESIGN.
please visit the other shops in the market place as you will have a much better experience and feel appreciated and satisfied with your business.

***Review for S. HONG DESIGN***
DO NOT GO HERE!
Ever heard of the saying «Do not over promise and under deliver»? Well this place does exactly that, they over promise and severely under deliver.
I won’t get into the details on how they screwed up, there’s so much screwing up I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I will say this, I’m a very forgiving person, everyone is human and makes mistakes. I’ve never given a 1 star review in any review platform, this will be my first. What really gets under my skin and prompted me to write this review is when a business clearly makes several mistakes and then tries to cover it up and/​or put blame on the customer. This was my experience with this establishment. Lots of excuses and finger pointing.
The woman that I dealt with was not only very unprofessional, but she is the type of person you cannot reason with. She is the master of her own universe. So frustrating. She is very difficult to communicate with and I’m not talking language barrier, I’m talking about just being able to engage in a normal conversation.
CLIFF NOTES:
***WILL ROYALLY F UP ORDER***
***WILL NOT ACKNOWLEDGE ERRORS***
***IMPOSSIBLE TO REASON WITH***

I stopped by yesterday an to my surprise, Fam Mart is back! The name and all! Yes!!! More stores are opening up inside. I got some great deals.

These guys make great stuff! Come in here to get anything custom made and for Greek letters they always turn out great :)

This place is a ghost town and vacant inside. I live right around the corner and have been dying to come make a trip to an inside swap meet that is two minutes from my house. I am a San Diego native and am so used to a busy hyped up swap meet like Kobey’s or Santee swap meet and I was 100% dissapointed. The vendors were WAY overpriced and under quality. It was a joke. Seriously, save your time and don’t come to the four corners of death. They don’t deserve the profit of my hard work. I will put my two cents on Unilocal and donate to Kobey’s vendors.

Great place to shop for jewelry and apparel of all kinds. Custom shirts embroidery and airbrushing available.

This place is dead. I have been coming here since at least the early 90s and it is so empty now. They mostly just sell clothes. The same clothes they sold in the 90s but with different pictures on it. They still do custom hats and of course all the usual teams, plus variations on padres and charges stuff. Not sure why so many people stopped coming here. There is about five different discount stores in the same mini-​mall so maybe that’s why?

Recently, fam mart was condensed to one corner of the complex to make room for budget shopping places.
Anyway, my favorite screen printer is still there! If you are looking to get quality screenprinting done in a timely professional manner, from someone who speak English well go to Harry at T-​shirt Bakers. He has never let me down and I’ve done 4 – 5 projects from him including a bulk order of 30 shirts and just 1 or 2 shirts at a time. (he does all of my disney shirts).
I usually come handy with my design and the images I want to use on a USB as well as my own t-​shirts.

I came into Fam Mart as much as 3x a week during Formals season to get blankets, jackets, beanies, towels, you name it, I probably got it embroidered here, for my pledge bros, twins, pledge sisters, Big Bro/​Sis, Lil Bro/​Sis.
It gets a little confusing because there are like 6 different shops, but they are all more or less connected to one another, so you need to check which items are being sold by which owner. I don’t particularly like the quality of the clothing items here for jackets & sweaters, but if you don’t care too much about that, then it’s fine to buy them here. I bought tanks & beanies from the store on the right closest to the door when you walk in and then got them embroidered by the man on the left side in the middle. It truly is a hit or miss. It’s great that they show you a preview on a computer screen right in front of you, but when you come back to pick it up.
TIP:
— DOUBLE CHECK everything before you give the OK to work on your items (they don’t have a formal form so they scribble notes down on a sheet of paper)
— DOUBLE CHECK everything when you come to pick it up (they wrote the wrong name for one of mine)
— check prices between all the stores because the prices vary
— check services between all the stores, and ask every single worker even in the same store (long story short: from the same store, one worker said they couldn’t embroider at a certain location but another worker said they could, and indeed, they were able to)
PRO:
— cheap & fast
— show you a preview
— embroidery & silk screening
CON:
— may mess up on your order
Apparently, there’s drama between the ladies on the left side the back two stores, sooo if you want get something embroidered at one store, and a jacket from another store, make sure you transfer the things yourself because my big sis’ order got delayed because there was an argument between the two ladies.
Some friends ordered things from the very back left store and they had good quality embroidery done, too… so I guess you can give that a try. I personally haven’t gotten anything done from them, though.

This review is for KOS Designs shop specifically, one of many shops in this center. I was so impressed Im giving KOS a rating here and on his individual page. As for Fam Mart as a whole, its like Rhadford C. said «This place will scare the living daylights out of white people.!!» Kinda true — but I was OK. This place was HARD to find. Its under construction right now, so when I pulled up to where my nav directed, I thought I had just gotten bad directions to a closed building. I called KOS after making a few loops and he instructed me perfectly and was waiting for me at the entrance. Hows that for great service?! He got the job done on the spot and did it affordably and beautifully (for details go to the KOS Design review) and he was nice as can be. I recommend him!

Went to Fam Mart on Sunday and my how things have changed. This place is pretty much empty now since the raid on the black market CD’s being sold here. I wish they had more vendors so I can have something local.

This is like an indoor Swap Meet, but im going to review CAPTOWN and the embroidery there.
New Era caps for 25.99
and Levis for i think 32 – 37
Kim’s prices is lower than Franks
There are multiple prices depending on design
Frank is on the left side
Kim is on the right side
Frank has a easier layout and ordering form
Kim you draw yo shit like it’s ghettoooo
Simple Design, 15 dollars for letters in front
20 for the double stitching (borderline effect)
22 – 25 Customized Design (aka like plaid or some effect)
+5 to add 3 effect (he places Styrofoam like in the letters to make them pop out)
Adding small text 3 dollars
4 Bucks for the arms
5 Bucks for upper back and lower back
then Add Tax
I paid 52
Kim will not rush order your letters
Takes about two weeks
They will not call you to pick up so you have to call them and confirm with name and phone number
They also have clothes you can buy there if you want to get them embroidered, but I rather get my jackets from Urban Outfitters or Foreign Exchange!

Do Not Go To Frank’s Embroidery. (If you enter through the doors, his shop is the one on the way left).
GREEK COMMUNITY:
I’ve been going to Frank to get some stuff embroidered since 2008. It’s hit or miss sometimes, a gamble, ⁵⁰⁄₅₀. I’m the type of person to get things done a month or two before an event so that rush hour doesn’t hit. Its either wrong font, color, size, placement of embroidering, or misplaces articles of clothing. I usually let things slide.
This last time I brought in 8 sweaters to get stitched. All on the side of the seam. I printed a guide out this time so this order would go smoothly. I drew out a picture of the article of clothing as well as the placement of it and we spoke together about how he did it last time at the seam and it would be fine.
A week later he texts me to say hes not ready and for me to pick it up on a later day. When I picked the sweaters up, half of them were crooked going diagonally onto the back of the sweater, ALL of them were 4 inches from the seam. So the letters were on the back of the sweater rather than the side. He also said «my machine does not allow me to do it close to the seam.» I found it a lie because he did it for me last time and one of the sweaters this time was an inch from the seam.
He said he couldn’t redo them because they would take an hour to fix per sweater. I ended up spending an hour on each sweater unstitching them. No refund of some sort and he said me made a «Verbal agreement that he does not recall making.» His paperwork consists of the customer drawing out what they want on a blank sheet of paper. He stopped picking up my calls, closed up shop for several days, basically took my money and did an unprofessional job.
This was just one of the many incidents.
NEVER GOING TO HIM FOR BUSINESS AGAIN.

I came here to get the stitching for my little’s letters. There’s a bunch of stitching places in here… Buuuut.
Go to KOS EMBROIDERY! It’s this asian guy in the far back right. Don’t go all the way in to the back left. It’s the one before. And you can tell all he does is stitching. He even has a banner. He did the stitching for my little letters within an hour and I was able to pick it up right away! It was awesome! I stitched the hood, under the hood, both arms, and lower back. All of it was for like… $ 26, which is a pretty good price! Go to him! He’s legit! The stitching is just as good quality as the stitching anywhere I’ve seen. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty decent.

There used to be a lot more stores here, but I guess due to the poor economy they are shut down.
Older Korean couple store = I really like this «store» more like a night market shop, but they have lots of cute purses hanging on top. I bought 3 purses from here for about 15 — 20 each. You can bargain here which I do all the time. By bargain I mean you say «2 for 20» and if she say no then you leave.
Frank’s Embroidery = I go here to get letters done, the letters are kind of pricey in my opinion, because you already have to bring the sweater yourself, regardless of the other reviews though, my letters have never been messed up or stitched poorly :).
Ethnic hair stores = bahahah i love all these stores. They have TONS and TONS of stuff for hair, synthetic hair extensions, REAL hair extensions all for super affordable compared to sally hansen, ulta, etc. They also have sulfate free shampoos & hair repair products at an affordable price as well. These stores also sell alot of hair beads, which I use to make kandi. P.L.U.R.
CLOTHES = they have a huge variety of clothing if you are looking for a 50 cent in da club look. personally I can not pull off that look very well but if you can then you should definitely come here.

Do Not Go To Frank’s Embroidery. (If you enter through the doors, his shop is the one on the way left)
I gave him a list of things that I needed done & after a month, my items were still not ready for pick-​up. My friend and I had to make 3 – 4 trips back only for him to inform us that our items were still not ready.
He closed down his shop for 3 days without putting a notification on his door or anything. Very unreachable, as he had stopped picking up any of our phone calls. He badly messed up one of my tanks tops and even lost a shirt of mine that I had paid him in advance to embroider. My blood pressure nearly burst through the stratosphere.
He eventually compensated me $ 20 for the damages and missing things, but I’m not sure if that was even enough to suffice my inconvenient drives and wasted gas money.

So people always say this area is ghetto etc. But to me it’s just another place for me to save some money. I was introduced to this place and was afraid to see what it really was about. But now I am a fan and would recommend it to anyone who is not afraid of venturing out of their comfort zone. I go there to get my eyes brows waxed, Mani and Pedi at a very reasonable price. The ladies there are absolutely great and the nice thing about it is they always remember my face. Two thumbs up to the Vietnamese ladies!
There’s a ladies clothing store next door and I must say that the clothes are stylish and fashionable for a night out and did I say SEXY too.
Fam Mart is closed once a week (Tuesdays if I’m not mistaken) and open from 10am — 6pm last I checked.
I was told that there are not as much shops as it used to have. But those that remain still has great purchases and deals.

Ok, so I drove ohhhh about 20minutes to think I’m going to get some really good cheap bargain shopping done… uhmmm
only if the STORE itself was OPEN and NOT named something else. Yah hello, People should update on this. I suppose of the store was open and gave me some good deals, I wouldn’t have to give this place only one star. Le Sigh*
Anyway, the store is called SAN DIEGO… something? I’m not sure if that place is only open on specific DAYS and TIME? but that place was EMPTY and there was a GATE literally on the doors. so I have no idea if that place was abandoned even though it apparently looks like it.
No bueno. I really wanted to shop and see what I can get for being a broke college student. Hopefully there is a specific time and date its opened. but when I looked.nothing.