Just wait until the grand opening.

Target stores in Kapolei and Salt Lake held soft openings yesterday morning — to throngs of waiting shoppers, including more than 1,800 people who passed through the doors of the Kapolei store within 30 minutes of the 8 a.m. start.

Within 15 minutes, an entire rack of Alexander McQueen dresses had disappeared.

Within an hour, all 600 parking stalls were filled and all 500 shopping carts were in use.

"I have run a lot of Targets (on the Mainland), but I have never seen this level of energy," said Kapolei store manager Jon Radtke. "This was supposed to be a soft opening, but it's more like a grand opening."

Wendy Uribe, who lives on the Aliamanu Military Reservation near the Salt Lake store, said she didn't want to contend with a crowd on the retailer's advertised "grand opening" Sunday.

"It's going to be packed," she said. "It's going to be ridiculous on Sunday."

It turned out that Uribe was among about 450 people waiting to enter the Salt Lake store at 8 a.m. yesterday for the soft opening, which Target didn't widely publicize in hope that it would be a low-key start allowing new employees to fine-tune operations ahead of Sunday.

Uribe's friend Sharsti Rodriguez came, too, glad that three years after she moved from Idaho to Hawai'i with her husband, who is in the Army, the nation's second-largest discount retailer followed.

"Love Target," Rodriguez said. "Target is my lifesaver."

The Kapolei and Salt Lake stores are the first for Target in Hawai'i. A third store in the Big Island's Kailua town is scheduled to open in July.

CHEAP CHIC

It's not uncommon for national retailers opening their first store in Hawai'i to be overrun by shoppers on the first day of business. Similar welcomes have occurred for Kmart, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Nordstrom, among others.

But Target has a particularly big following among both kama'aina and Mainland transplants because of the retailer's broad selection of merchandise, which includes designer apparel at affordable prices.

Rita Liu, a 28-year-old nurse from Mililani, said she visits one or two Target stores whenever she travels to the Mainland, so it was a given that she would go to the Salt Lake and Kapolei stores on the first day they opened.

"I'm a little bit of a freak," she said.

Liu's husband, Brian, also 28, took half a day off from work as an insurance agency account manager to keep his wife from going overboard on spending.

"We're here because my wife loves Target," he said.

"He's scared I'm going to go bonkers," she said.

Regarded for cheap-chic offerings and affectionately called "Tar-jhay" (a swanky French- accent pronunciation of the store name) by some customers, Target is viewed by retail industry observers as opening at a fairly opportune time, amid a severe economic downturn in which consumers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars.

That said, Target hasn't been immune from the economic downturn. The company in January announced plans to cut 1,000 jobs at its Minneapolis headquarters, including 600 employees and 400 vacant positions, and close a distribution center employing 500.

Target also recently reported a 6 percent decline in fourth-quarter sales at stores open at least a year, and is forecasting an expected "mid-single-digit" percentage point decline for sales in the first half of this year at stores open at least a year.

New-store sales typically are stronger, so the two Hawai'i Target stores, along with 25 others on the Mainland holding grand openings Sunday, will help the chain, which has about 1,700 stores in 49 states.

CONSUMER KA-CHING

Rita Liu, the nurse shopping on opening day, bought about $250 worth of merchandise including food, clothes and gift cards yesterday at the Salt Lake store.

Rachel James, 25, of Wahiawa was at the Kapolei store opening with her 2-year-old daughter Safiyyah. She said she was doing her part to help the economy.

"I'm buying things I don't need," she said.

James, whose husband Nykita is an Army staff sergeant deployed to Iraq, said she was ecstatic that Target is here, and that she planned to stop by the Salt Lake store, too.

Kristal Ka'auwai, a 22-year-old Longs Drug Stores pharmacy employee, walked five minutes from her Aliamanu home to be first in line at the Salt Lake Target at 5:30 a.m.

She said she was just curious to see what Target is about, and to prove to her family that she doesn't always sleep in on her day off. "I wanted to check it out," she said.

Also making a special appearance at the Salt Lake store yesterday was 5-year-old white female bull terrier Bullseye, whose left eye was painted with the store's trademark. Target flew the dog in from California on Monday for the opening.

BUSTIN' SOME MOVES

At the Kapolei store, about a hundred employees lined up outside just before 8 a.m. to do an energetic dance and chant they created themselves.

"I say ... can I find you something? ... there must be a Target in this atmosphere," shouted the dancers, who moved in unison while clapping their hands to the syncopated rhythm of the words. "We're fast ... and we're fun ... and we're friendly ... Target Number One, What? What? ... O-e-O-e-O ... Kapolei!"

The opening dance and chant was so well received that store manager Radtke said he's thinking of making it a regular morning feature, and will definitely hold an encore performance on Sunday.

"We definitely plan on doing that," he said. "It was really cool."