While Amsterdam is a big city, it's not a metropolis on the scale of London or Paris, so it doesn't have an equivalent of, say, Harrods. But what it does have is an independent and vibrant sense of style, and hundreds of great shops to prove it. There's Hoofstraat, also known as the 5th Ave of Amsterdam, which has literally hundreds of high quality clothes shops in it, then there's the more conventional department stores in the centre of town. One of the best places I've been clothes-wise is Look Out, which sells the kind of decent designer gear that's for real people - Paul Smith, Stone Island etc.

Amsterdam also excels in its antique shops, I'm told, but beyond passing a few of these shops in the street, I've not got much experience of them, not being much of an antique freak. The markets in Amsterdam are uniformly excellent - as you'd expect from mainland western Europe, with special emphasis on typically Dutch specialities such as the flower market. Supermarkets aren't particularly varied in terms of operators, the main one being the Albert Heijn chain, which is reasonably cheap (if you're from the UK you'll find the price of beer in Dutch supermarkets to be agreeable), well stocked and has friendly staff who pretty much all seem to speak perfect English.

Another type of shop that I'm unfamiliar with (you'll just have to trust me on this) is the Coffee Shop. They are dotted around here and there, maybe with slightly more in the De Wallen area. But despite Amsterdam being well known for its liberalised laws in allowing coffee shops, you wouldn't notice them had you not been told of their existence.

All in all I'd rate Amsterdam extremely highly for its retail - it definitely has more to offer than most cities of comparable size elsewhere. Might need to get cheap ferry tickets - leaves all the more money to spend when when I get there...