Valley businesses enjoy PFD ‘bump’

WASILLA — With $3,200 and change hitting bank accounts around the Valley on Friday, the reports from local merchants were uniformly positive, if a little frazzled.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Friday was payday for folks who signed up for direct deposit of their Permanent Fund Dividend check. Dividends are here, only this time the normally substantial check — totaling out this year at $2,069 — was supplemented by $1,200 in energy relief money from the state.

“We’re crazy busy right now,” Nick Kenshalo, sales manager for Image Audio on Seward-Meridian Parkway, said before dashing off to help a customer. “We can’t keep anything in stock. We knew about dividends coming and we still can’t keep anything in stock.”

Kenshalo said the most popular items have been television sets and car accessories, top on the list being in-dash video players. On the whole, he said, this year has been remarkably good, attributing the boost in sales to high gas prices and folks opting to spend money locally rather than go on vacation.

Alice Mobley, general manager at Hartley Motors at Mile 36.5 Parks Highway, said shortly before noon that business had so far been brisk.

“Oh, jeez, well it’s only been a few hours but Honda ATVs and small generators are definitely popular already this morning,” Mobley said.

She said she can tell these folks apart from those she sees at other times in the year mostly by their method of payment.

“The difference is they’re paying cash. They’re just whipping out the checkbooks,” she said.

A dividend, she said, is good in some cases for a down payment but in a lot of instances the $3,269 check is enough for an ATV or a dirt bike.

“Anything we had under $3,000 we got out and put in a big display,” Mobley said.

At the Mac Haus just off the Parks Highway where it intersects with Hermon Road, lead tech Bruce Benton said computers have been flying off the shelves.

“We had a booth at the [Alaska State] Fair and I’d say the vast majority of folks who stopped by the booth at the fair and were considering buying a computer said, ‘I’ll stop by on the 12th’ or ‘I’ll see you on the 12th,’”

A lot of them, Benton said, are making good on their promises.

He said iPods aren’t selling as well, though he’s not surprised. Just this week, he said, Macintosh announced they’d be rolling out new iPod products soon and folks seem to be waiting for that.

The picture is much the same at Valley Motorsports. Though they don’t actually sell ATVs, the store is doing brisk business in modifications and upgrades.

Owner J.C. Collvins said Thursday he’d already been taking in machines to be worked on prior to the checks hitting bank accounts.

“I had a kid that dropped off a four wheeler and he blew it all,” on a modification package totaling out to about what the dividend would be, Collvins said Thursday.

“I’m all for it. I just hope everything gets spent here in the state,” Collvins said of the enhanced check this year.

Collvins said that though dividends are giving him a boost, as it has for Kenshalo and Image Audio, this year has been especially good for him.

“This whole summer’s been badass,” he said.

Even the Valley restaurants are getting in on the action. Over at Evangelo’s Restaurant on the Parks Highway shortly after noon, owner Evangelo Lambernakis couldn’t make it to the phone. The woman who answered said that, with all the business, he was tied up in the kitchen.

Later, after things had settled down, Lambernakis said the dividend always gives him a bump.

“People have money and even the people around the borough like today, tomorrow, probably the next day, will come in,” he said.

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