If TV commercials are to be believed, Target has a certain white-bearded employee named Kris K. who makes lengthy lists of the best gifts to buy from the Bullseye.
But what if Santa (or Mrs. Claus) needed to make a Target run?
The retailer has about 1,995 stores, and its northernmost location is just north of Anchorage, Alaska, in the city of Wasilla.
Despite the numerous challenges of running a big box store in the frontier state — merchandise takes several weeks to arrive via boat — locations like the one in Wasilla do brisk business and help keep far-flung communities connected to the rest of the US.
Matt Hage/AP Content Services for Target
Amy Sevenski, the store’s head of specialty sales, told Business Insider there aren’t many national retail chains in Wasilla.
“Target is a place that you go to hang out, to walk around with your family,” she said.
These rural stores also give retailers like Walmart and Target a head start in the kinds of smaller markets where Amazon is now seeking to make inroads.
Backed by mountains and frequented by wildlife like roof eagles and parking lot moose, the store was Target’s first location in Alaska in 2008. Two more opened shortly after in nearby Anchorage.
“The drive to Wasilla is the most beautiful drive you can take to a Target in the entire United States,” said Justin Howells, Target’s group vice president for the Pacific Northwest, in an interview with Business Insider.
Matt Hage/AP Content Services for Target
Danielle Hodgson, who has worked at the store since it first opened and now runs the beauty section, told Business Insider the holiday shopping season kicks off in earnest in October when each Alaskan gets an oil dividend check from the state.
“That’s when you see a lot of traffic coming from the bush,” she said. “They have to fly into Anchorage and travel to Wasilla to go shopping.”
The store has even served customers from as far away as Utqiaġvik, Alaska — also known as Barrow — on the Arctic coast.
“That’s like the equivalent of somebody flying from New Jersey to Florida to pick up their supplies for the holiday,” Howells said. “Some of the guests here are coming from really far away to do their Target run.”
In addition to having fresh cash to spend, winter offers further motivation for shoppers to get an early start.
“We’re definitely at the mercy of the weather,” Sevenski said. “We have to do a lot of pivoting for sure.”
Matt Hage/AP Content Services for Target
One such pivot is the way the store handles drive-up fulfillment.
Sevenski said drive-up transactions are doubling each year, and that the orders are getting bigger, too. Since it’s not always possible to keep the parking lot clear of snow, and regular carts would get bogged down, the team got creative.
“We call her Dolly Carton,” Sevenski said. “It’s just a regular flat cart, and we’ve put some big beefy winter tires on it, built some bins onto it, because drive-up is something that has evolved so much here in Alaska.”
While Sevenski and Hodgson couldn’t recall fulfilling any drive-up orders for customers in sleighs or on snow machines, they said trailers and U-Haul trucks were a common sight in the parking lot.
“They do have some larger baskets, because people are stocking up,” Howells said. “But we do see pretty comparable traffic compared to the rest of the US here, just they’re buying different things — or more of it.”
Howells also said the store carries a similar cold-weather assortment to what other high-latitude Target locations offer, but Sevenski said two product categories see exceptional demand thanks to the area’s sub-freezing temperatures and less than six hours of winter daylight.
“We’re definitely selling a lot of washer fluid,” she said — the de-icing kind.
“And coffee,” she added. “Our Starbucks does amazing here.”
