Party store thriving in new building

WASILLA — Having spent five months working out of his new building, Andrew Gumley, co-owner of Special Events Alaska party store, said he’s loving it.

“Our foot traffic and our visibility has gone through the roof,” he said of the difference he noticed since moving into the new building at the end of December.

“We’re getting a lot of people who didn’t know we existed because we were located where we were located,” he said.

Some ask if the store is a new Valley branch of an Anchorage business or a franchise of a national change. The old location on the Palmer-Wasilla was apparently just not visible. Now visible from the Parks Highway on Sun Mountain Avenue between Allen and Peterson and the Salvation Army, the store is just easier to stumble upon.

“I guess as the Valley grows we get less and less able to depend on that it’s-a-small-town-where-we-all-know-what-is-available dynamic,” Gumley said.

He said customers seem really happy to be able to find things they once had to go to Anchorage for.

So what is it the party store does? This past week, Gumley said, just as in years past, has been a hectic one. Usually, he said, graduation is the second busiest time of the year behind Halloween.

“We probably do more balloons during this week than we do during a typical month,” he said.

He said the store offers balloons customized for each Valley high school, often with mascot artwork from the school itself.

“That’s been a popular thing, it’s been a good success,” he said.

At Halloween time, the store sells costumes. But that’s just the retail side of things. The store also does rental work.

“We’ve got seven tents that went out this morning for vents from Wasilla to Trapper Creek,” Gumley said.

The company services parties from Girdwood to Talkeetna.

“It’s a big spread,” he said. “We handle all of the transportation and all of the event set up and all of the décor and all of the installation of the décor.”

Gumley said that the old building worked great for a start, but the business outgrew it. Special Events has been around since 1997 when his parents started it as a side business to their equipment rental operation.

“I was out of state for a long time and then my wife and I bought the company in 2009,” Gumley said. His wife’s name is Anne-Renee Gumley.

Most things the business does are easier to do in the new store. It wasn’t a big expansion, really. The building is actually smaller than the old one, but they didn’t use the full building in the old location. The actual square footage occupied is larger, but more importantly, it’s laid out much better.

“The ceilings are much taller here as well so the shelving is taller for the shop and we’ve got shelving that’s motorized on tracks that can roll around and save space in the warehouse as well too,” he said.

And then there are the little things. Like before, when they needed to make a water-weight to hold a balloon down they had to walk across the shop.

“We have water piped over to the balloon counter now,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.