Undercover: ‘Alaska Chicks’ feather nest in downtown Palmer

PALMER — A grand opening, a store expansion; call it what you will, but downtown has a new outlet for vintage furniture and even a few style accessories.

“This all came together in a couple of weeks,” said Teresa Ray, owner of Cover Ups in Palmer.

She was talking about the space next door, which she has set up as something like a boutique with multiple vendors displaying furniture for sale. She sees it almost as an incubator for good ideas.

For years, Ray said, she shared her downtown space with another company, usually a flooring company or some other home-interiors kind of business. When the opportunity to take over the whole space herself came up, she went for it, though it was kind of a leap of faith, she said.

The idea for furniture came about kind of by happenstance. Ray started refurbishing and reselling furniture awhile back . When word got out that she was refurbishing, furniture would randomly show up at the shop. Sometimes when she arrived to open up shop in the morning furniture would be there waiting.

“It just kind of got out of control and I’m glad it did because I’m happy to be able to provide Charity (Folcik) and really creative moms a place to show their wares.”

For Folcik, whose company is called Alaska Chicks, moving her wares into that space and setting it up as a shop has been something of a whirlwind. She’s nine months pregnant and, as of Friday when she spoke, already past her due date.

Folcik said she and Faith Bates — who has her own business called Designs by Faith — have been working with furniture for some time.

“For the past two or three years we’ve been painting furniture and up-cycling furniture for Ozarks Antiques in Anchorage,” she said. “Hauling furniture to Anchorage is not fun. So we just decided to try this store in downtown Palmer.”

The Alaska Chicks logo defines the style of the furniture as “rugged, vintage, chic.”

“The rugged, vintage distressed look, that’s how we like to paint it,” she said.

The furniture comes to them from all over — garage sales, Craigslist, thrift stores, even giveaway piles and Dumpsters.

“We get a lot of things, junk that people don’t want. We love to take it and make it beautiful and new again,” she said.

Folcik said that, in addition to the furniture, she is also selling T-shirts with the Alaska Chicks logo, mostly in kids’ sizes, and hats and headbands. She said the headbands have been really popular. Customers tell her all the time that they don’t know how to reply when people ask them where to get their own similar headband. The storefront will make that much easier, Folcik said.

She said she and Bates often bring their wares to weekend markets and craft shows.

“People always asked us, ‘Where’s your store? Where’s your store?’ and we were like, ‘We don’t have one, yet.’”

But now they do.

“This was a great opportunity for us to be able to team up with Cover Ups and other local ladies and be able to do this,” she said.

For more information, visit the businesses’ online shops at alaskachicks.com or palmer-coverups.com.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.