Our Aruba Wedding

One of our favorite tips involved figuring out where to buy (and not to buy) Aruba Aloe products. We were surprised to find that the Aruba Aloe Factory and retail locations were the most expensive places we saw Aruba Aloe Products.

We learned that this is because these are sales intended for tourists! Weeks ago I had emailed the Aruba Aloe Factory directly since I knew they would deliver to the hotel. I asked for a price on 30 4oz tubes of Aruba Aloe After Sun cream that would be purchased and consumed in Aruba and was told they would be $13.75 USD each! At first I thought they were being opportunistic and trying to scam me but then I found out there is a big difference between ‘tourist’ and ‘local’ pricing and the factory will offer you the ‘tourist’ prices.

When we got to Aruba, one of the first things we did was take a trip to the grocery store. I believe it was Super Food where they had the After Sun priced at $8.54 USD each. I breathed a sigh of relief – there was hope that I would still be able to include this in the welcome bags. Luckily I thought I could do even better because I had found the product on Ling & Sons‘ website for $7.10. We went there and sure enough it was $7.10 USD. (When price shopping, always make sure items are priced in US dollars, or at least that you’re comparing the same currencies.)

We went to make our purchase at Ling & Sons to find out that they didn’t have enough in stock. Would you believe that they were then kind enough to call their distributor for us to see if they had enough in stock. They did and priced out that same After Sun product at around $5 each! Not only that, we were welcome to go purchase from this distributor directly! (Our other option was to go to the difference grocery stores to collect enough but that it would be worth our drive to the agency.)

This wholesaler is: Oduber Agencies, Wayaca 33-B, Oranjestad, Aruba. They sold all of the Aruba Aloe products we were interested in, though of course minimum quantities applied. What was that minimum quantity? THREE! We could buy as little as 3 at a time. So, we purchased 24 of the Aruba Aloe After Sun, 6 of the Aruba Aloe Gel Burn Aid, and 3 of the regular green Aloe Vera Gel. Minimum quantities for lip balm are higher (24 or 36 I think), however they happened to have an open case in the office that they allowed us to buy 12 from. I think they may accept cash only – at least we paid cash. They have a walk up window – not a showroom or retail display, but if you know what you want, they could save you a lot of money! And the ladies there were really sweet! Probably 6 of them came out to look at my henna’d hands.

Here is an Aruba Aloe After Sun display we saw in an Aruba Aloe store the following day, priced at $15.25 USD! That’s nearly 3 times what we paid.

Here is the store in the Renaissance Mall, downtown where the above photo was taken:

Oduber is a little tricky to get to and I seem to remember it being out of the way – maybe near the airport?

If you can’t make it there, check out the grocery stores. There are 3 or 4 of them in the same area on your way to the hotels. You’ll see Super Food easily from the street. We liked Ling & Sons the best (its behind the others – you can’t see it from the main drag) – it seemed the newest and brightest and more like where we are used to shopping at home, but a couple of people have said the others may have better prices. In general, we did not find the prices at the grocery store to be too crazy. I’d think of it as shopping downtown in a big city like Chicago. And the bottled water we thought we’d go to Pricesmart for is less than $1 each at the supermarket so we didn’t bother with Pricesmart, a trip we would have had to coordinate with our wedding planner. (Pricesmart is a members only shopping club like Costco.)