Want a Spartina 449 purse for 80 percent off? Better get some rest

At the very first Spartina 449 warehouse sale in 2012, two women fainted.

But not because they saw how many purses were 80 percent off.

Though that would be understandable.

“Oh, it was so hot (that year),” said Kay Stanley, who is the designer and creator of the popular handbag and accessory line that she and her husband, Curt, started on Daufuskie Island in 2009.

The sale was set to begin at 1 p.m. in 2012, and it was held in two unventilated garages where the company kept its overstock.

Stanley and her staff said they weren’t sure what to expect that first year, but it certainly wasn’t the 500 people who had lined up at the industrial park and in the crosshairs of Hilton Head Island’s summer sun well before the opening.

“We didn’t think anyone would come,” national sales manager Riley O’Connell said.

Four years later, at the Spartina 449 warehouse pre-sale Thursday night in the Hilton Head Island High School gym — which was held for family and friends of Spartina employees and for teachers at the high school — Stanley and O’Connell laughed at the absurdity of that thought.

“We didn’t care,” Sheree Johnson of Knoxville, Tenn., said of the heat. “You opened it early for us.”

“That’s because people like you were staring at us,” Stanley laughed.

Johnson was their very first customer in line at the 2012 sale. Since then, with a little Southern charm and the help of some “likes” on O’Connell’s personal Instagram photos, Johnson now qualifies as a Spartina “family and friend.” She also swears she’s not a creeper.

She scheduled her vacation on Hilton Head around the sale, and her purchases Thursday night required a large canvas rolling bin.

But her new VIP status meant she could sleep in the next day when the sale started in earnest.

The rest of us had to set our alarms and try hard not to press “Snooze.”

At 5 a.m. Friday, customers began to line up outside the high school, a full four and a half hours before the sale was to start.

By 6:30 a.m. it was so muggy that my clothes felt like they were made entirely of used facecloths.

Staff passed out doughnuts from the Sugaree in Bluffton, and repeatedly answered the question “Will the doors open early?” A security guard could not get over the fact that this was all for handbags. Women changed into sneakers and shared stories of other warehouse sales, like Vera Bradley in Ohio and Lilly Pulitzer in Philadelphia.

Both sounded ghastly, then again I hate sales and lines and waiting.

These women, though, were tough, and practically had teardrops tattooed on their faces to represent each Black Friday customer they’ve killed.

“I was once pushed into a rack of clothes at Lilly Pulitzer,” said Customer No. 6 Holly Alexander of Okatie.

Alexander is tiny. She could’ve died in a tangle of resort wear.

Her plan at this sale was to get in, get out and then climb back into her unmade bed at home.

“It feels so good to be up here,” she said of her place in line. Last year she arrived at the sale later and ended up with a long wait at the cash registers.

“It was worse than Disney World,” she said.

Tammy Mudd of Wilmington, Ohio, planned her vacation to the island strictly around the sale. She had on sneakers and a cross-body purse.

“I’ve learned from Vera Bradley,” she said.

During the wait outside the school, her husband, Brian, watched a movie on his phone and then played some Candy Crush.

“I didn’t want her to come alone,” he said.

Later she hung a brightly colored ladies’ golf bag off of him and parked him in a corner to watch over her pile of potential purchases.

I checked, he had his phone charger with him just in case Tammy decided they needed to spread out some Spartina beach towels and have a sleepover with the discounted purses.

At the official start time of 9:30 a.m., the first 150 customers had been shopping for 45 minutes and the balance of the 1,050 people who had been given numbered tickets for entry thus far were waiting in various states of sweat and tolerance in the high school cafeteria and hallways.

“I’ve never seen so many people this age in my school,” Hilton Head high sophomore Jasmine Moe had said earlier to her mom, Elise, who works in the systems department at Spartina.

Before the gym doors opened, Spartina employees new to the sale wondered what it was going to be like.

One man laughed, “Are they going to filter in real nice or (pantomimes a scene from a dystopian future in which humans must use their elbows to stab their enemies in the chest so they won’t get to the display of rolling suitcases and makeup cases first)?”

The experienced employees likened the sale to the running of the bulls.

I held my phone aloft, expecting to see women taking each other down with nunchakus and then doing ninja rolls to the beach bag section.

Instead they walked in quickly, but politely.

In fact, everyone seemed really considerate of each other.

I caught up with customers Nos. 1 and 2, friends Janet Secrest (No. 1) and Kyle Theodore (No. 2), both of Hilton Head. They were the first two in line last year too, though in the reverse order.

“I let her be No. 1 this year,” Theodore said.

“And technically I made it here first,” Secrest said.

Theodore wondered about the colors of a bag she was thinking about buying for a Bunco friend.

“That is sort of wintry,” Secrest said before offering to watch the piles so Theodore could get a brighter color.

Neither woman was one bit frantic or cutthroat about it. Then again, they were old pros at this. Theodore has been to all four annual warehouse sales, and she remembered how hot that first year was.

One of the women who passed out did so in the checkout line, she said.

“She had bags up and down both arms.”

The ambulance came, and the fallen soldier was taken away on a stretcher.

“It was so sad,” Theodore said. “On her way out, she said, ‘What about my pocketbooks?’”

This story was originally published July 22, 2016 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Want a Spartina 449 purse for 80 percent off? Better get some rest."