With the holiday season fast approaching, Ames retailers are gearing up for busy days. But none is busier than the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday.

“That’s the biggest volume day we have all year,” said Scott Gire, store manager at Younkers, 2801 Grand Ave.

Hoping to catch early bird shoppers, many stores have continued to crank back the clock.

Younkers will open at 4 a.m.

“I think last year was [4 a.m.], the year before that was [5 a.m.],” Gire said. “It’s kind of like it was a race who could open the earliest.”

Target, which opened at 6 a.m. last year, will be opening at 5 a.m. this year.

“The different retailers around the area, a lot of them have always opened at five, so we’re excited to compete with that business,” said Lyndsay Polking, store team leader at Target, 320 S. Duff Ave.

It’s early, but with all the deals and promotions, customers will wake up at any hour.

“In recent years we’ve had hundreds of people lining up outside,” Polking said.

Sometimes it’s a free gift that will get shoppers through the door. For the past several years, North Grand Mall has given out gift bags to the first group of consumers in the mall at 7 a.m.

“The first 200 shoppers get a bag filled with goodies,” said Bonnie Johnson, senior marketing manager at North Grand Mall, 2801 Grand Ave. “We put $20 mall gift cards in 20 of them.”

With the Black Friday rush, though, they’re gone in a flash.

“They’re all given out within minutes,” Johnson said.

Then it’s back to shopping.

Gire said his store’s revenue on Black Friday is about 10 times that of a normal Friday. Most of that comes between 4 a.m. and 1 p.m., during the store’s door buster promotions.

“We do, in that time frame, 90 percent of the total day’s business,” Gire said.

Lots of preparation goes into those few hours of shopping. The Younkers in Ames doesn’t normally have a home department, but a few select items are shipped in specially for Black Friday.

“We just have to carve out space,” Gire said. “They only ship what they know we’re going to sell out. If we’re left with it, we don’t have anywhere to put it.”

Retailers need to have a strong team, too, in order to deal with the surge in traffic.

“It is all hands on deck,” said Alicia Roufs, manager at Maurice’s. “We have every associate working on Black Friday.”

In fact, it’s a stipulation in the interview.

“You have to be available this day, or you can’t have a job, basically,” Roufs said.

Once Black Friday comes, some retailers provide food or other goodies for their employees.

“We do a potluck so they don’t have to go out in the mall and buy food,” Roufs said.

Employees will need their energy, as the store will see about three times as many customers as usual.

For some, it’s tradition.

“They’ll say they do this every year — it’s like their family tradition,” Gire said.

For others, it’s a day of deals.

“It’s not even just people buying gifts,” Roufs said. “It’s people shopping, just looking for deals.”

And for the retailers that make it all happen, it’s a hectic — but exciting — day.

“This is what retail is all about,” Polking said.