Ready, set … charge!

MAT-SU — While many spent a long morning in bed Friday sleeping off turkey hangovers, others were up early piling into local businesses looking for deals on the heaviest shopping day of the year.

Commonly referred to as Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving is known for early store openings, hectic shoppers and crowded retail outlets. Many stores, like Wal-Mart and Sportsman’s Warehouse, opened extra early with special holiday deals to entice shoppers to visit. Valley stores were ready for the onslaught and were buzzing all day.

To prepare, Wal-Mart employees stocked shelves Thursday night with extra products and secret sales items, said Marlene Munsell, manager of the Wasilla Wal-Mart Supercenter. Although the supercenter is open 24 hours a day, it maintained the secrecy of the Black Friday deals by covering the items with black shrink-wrap. Finally, at 5 a.m., the cloak was lifted and the secret items were up for grabs.

“I had almost 800 customers in the first hour,” Munsell said. “That’s about 300 more people than last year.”

Tammy Hubbard, a Big Lake resident, started her Black Friday at 7 a.m. with hopes of securing the perfect gifts for family and friends.

“This is usually when I do my Christmas shopping,” Hubbard said about the day after Thanksgiving. “It’s when they really have the best deal [on] electronics.”

Hubbard completes about 80 percent of her Christmas shopping on Black Friday and plans to spend around $2,000 this season on gifts. Expecting to spend about $1,600 dollars in one day, Friday was expensive, but productive for Hubbard, costing about $229 a hour for her seven-hour shopping spree.

Some Valley residents rolled out of bed and cruised right over to local stores, but the Freeman family traveled all the way to Wasilla from Talkeetna to shop at stores not available in the upper Susitna Valley. And the journey doesn’t stop in Wasilla.

“We’re are actually starting here and then we have a hotel room in Anchorage for the next two nights. So, it’s actually a three-day thing,” Suzy Freeman said of the family’s weekend shopping extravaganza. Although the family lives in a small town, crowded stores and shopping centers are all too familiar. As former residents of Dallas, the crowds of people were large enough there to keep the family away from shopping centers on Black Friday.

“We avoided it like the plague down there,” Freeman said, adding that in Alaska, the family enjoys city-bound shopping adventures knowing they won’t have to fight a Texas-sized crowd.

At Sportsman’s Warehouse, customers filled the parking lot a full hour before its 6 a.m. opening, said Steve McVeigh, manager of the Wasilla store. With 233 customers in the first hour of operation, sales were better than expected. While some customers decided to shop in the early morning hours, McVeigh said the store experienced its biggest surge of customers from noon to 1 p.m. During the lunch hour period, 350 customers walked through the doors at the new sporting good store, purchasing about $15,000 worth of items in that hour.

McVeigh said GPS units were a big seller, but other sporting goods made an impact on sales and customers.

“I know that guns have been flying out the door,” McVeigh said.

While holiday shoppers walked the aisles trying to find gifts for family and friends, Chris Weymouth spent his time at Sportsman’s looking for things to add to his own Christmas list.

“It’s like being a kid in a candy store,” Weymouth said. “You need a napkin to wipe the drool off the floor.”

Unlike the early morning approach of the large retailers, Fireside Books in Palmer opened its doors casually at 10 a.m. Friday.

“I think for me, Black Friday is not as significant,” said David Cheezem, owner of the bookstore. “It’s kind of the beginning of the season for us.”

Cheezem said business was steady throughout the day, but shopping in Palmer is a lot different than what people experience in other areas of the Valley.

“What’s nice about downtown Palmer is that it’s not combat shopping,” Cheezem said.

Overall, small businesses in Palmer provide an enjoyable shopping experience many people prefer, he said.

Contact Chris Gillow at chris.gillow@frontiersman.com or 352-2284.