Christmas shoppers out before sun

Katherine Lewis has this shopping thing nailed.

She snips sales items from advertising fliers, tapes each to paper and then staples them all together. Her cover sheet reads like a battle plan, with each store listed in order ranked by when they open and proximity to one another.

And she’s executing this plan in good spirits. Standing in line at the Spokane Valley Target in the cold. At 5 a.m.

“Some may call it a sickness. I call it fun,” she said. Her spree Friday was to last about 10 hours.

Retailers like Target depend upon shoppers like Lewis, those who enthusiastically usher in the Christmas gift-buying season.

Hundreds of people across the Inland Northwest converge on the big stores the Friday after Thanksgiving each year for bargains on electronics, tools, clothes, jewelry, toys and just about anything else that can be boxed and stacked on a shelf.

Many stores get things moving by offering select yet coveted items at deep discounts.

The lines were stretched long at Fred Meyer. Stanley tools were marked half-price along with slippers and memory cards.

A favorite bargain continues to be the DVD player. Sears had one on sale Friday for 20 bucks. Circuit City had a player for $17.99.

As the crowds coursed through Target, Lewis was last seen with two big boxes in her arms laughing at her sister-in-law, Bridget Wood, who was carrying the same merchandise.

The day after Thanksgiving is among the busiest shopping days of the year. It’s a valuable guide for retailers to gauge how brisk sales will be. It’s an important prediction as stores add 800,000 workers to the payroll for the month.

Stores are planning for better sales than a year ago. The National Retail Federation anticipates Americans will spend 4.5 percent more than last year.

If Friday was any indication, sales in Spokane should be strong.

A study by the Milken Institute recently ranked Spokane at No. 55 among cities for economic growth. It was Spokane’s best ranking – up from 157 a year ago.

In north Spokane, lines forming at Best Buy for MP3 players, DVDs, cameras and games created long waits.

Shopping at the area malls was anticipated to grow throughout the day and weekend. Malls such as NorthTown and River Park Square generally conceded the pre-dawn crush to the big-box store competitors.

River Park Square manager Bob Smith predicts an uptick this year. Some merchants in the downtown mall are reporting double-digit percentage gains.

There were few giveaways this year, and shoppers were generally looking for early-bird sales.

Stephen McGoldrick stood in line before his work shift at the Valley Transfer station. He was after a $167 portable DVD player.

His trick was to grab the item, buy it and make it to work by 6:30.

“My thought was get here early, pick it up and bang, I’m out of here and off to work,” he said.

Inside ShopKo, Jake Quilter looked a bit lost amid the clatter of shopping carts and rush-rush of people walking quickly to checkout lines.

Then he found an item sure to elicit a few laughs Christmas morning: a Motorola cordless phone that replaced the ring with the sounds of animals.

The phone, encased in a camouflaged cover mimics the sounds of 10 animals. There’s the honking of Canada geese; the yipping of coyotes; the screech of a red-tailed hawk, and the bugle of a bull elk.

Quilter pushed a button and heard the growl of a black bear: “This thing is great,” he said.