Specialty, hard-to-find batteries charge up new business

WASILLA — With parents scrambling to pick up the latest and greatest toy, batteries come to mind somewhat more this time of year.

And though it may not be a dilemma most people face often, if little Johnny wants something with a hard-to-find battery, Larry Banning’s got them covered.

On Monday, Banning opened Batteries Plus in Wasilla on Knik-Goose Bay Road just up from the highway. Batteries Plus is a national chain and this is Banning’s second franchise store. The other is on International Airport Road in Anchorage.

He said the Valley market is probably one of the smallest with a Batteries Plus store. But so far it’s looking like a good fit.

“We are just going crazy,” Banning said Wednesday from his Anchorage store. “I’ve got four guys out there and customers are just lined out the door.”

So far, he said, laptop batteries have proved popular. He thinks maybe folks are looking for a juiced up computer as they head out of state on vacation.

In the long term, “for the Wasilla market I think the motorcycle and ATV batteries are going to be one of our biggest movers.”

He said he’s already seen some of that.

“We had a guy pull up at our store on a snowmachine the other day. Where else could that happen?”

Banning has been selling batteries for years. He said he didn’t know much about the business before he started. But he knew he wanted to start a franchise and he knew he wanted something unique.

Since then, though, he’s gotten to be an expert in the field. His store stocks everything from iPod batteries to car batteries to double, triple and quadruple A batteries. Yes, they do make quadruple A batteries now.

Which leads to a question a lot of folks might wonder about, “whatever happened to single A batteries?

“There is a single A battery but that refers to a rechargeable and they haven’t used that thing for, holy cow, I don’t even know if I can still get them or not,” Banning said.

They were used, he said, mostly in radios and other equipment circa World War II.

What’s the strangest battery he keeps in stock?

“Probably the weirdest stuff I have is the very old Energizer carbon batteries,” which, he said, look like AA batteries but are square. “They don’t use them in devices anymore but a lot of old garage door openers use them.”

And those garage door openers are common enough that he keeps some on hand for folks who need replacements.

“Every day we have customers coming in saying ‘I can’t find this battery anywhere else,’” he said. “There’s no way we can have them all but nothing’s more than two days away.”

He said he’s been kicking around the idea of a Wasilla store for about two years but has seriously explored the idea for about nine months. The Valley’s growth, he said, was his main motivating factor.

“I think In Anchorage I was open for three months before I’d seen 25 customers and they did that on opening day [in Wasilla].”