Furniture First Adds Two Retailers to Kick Off 2020

Furniture World News Desk on 1/8/2020

Furniture First recently kicked off the new year with the addition of two retailers to the membership of the national buying group: Bacon’s Furniture and Red Mountain Retail. Both retailers operate Ashley HomeStores in addition to multi-line stores.

The Bacon family opened their first furniture store in 1977. Over the years the Bacon family operated stores in different formats in various locations along Florida’s Suncoast, including gallery stores under the Thomasville and Drexel Heritage marquees. Today, Bacon’s Furniture functions as two stores in one with an Ashley HomeStore adjoining their 100,000 square foot flagship store in Port Charlotte, FL.

Red Mountain Retail operates OFR (Online Furniture Return Store) in Bessemer, AL, as well as eight Ashley HomeStores in Alabama. Owner Allen “Woody” Marks came from a furniture family; his grandfather opened a furniture store in Bessemer, AL in 1938.  Marks held many positions in the business his grandfather founded, Marks Fitzgerald Furniture, before opening Huntsville Wholesale Furniture Inc in 1987. He opened his first Ashley store in 2004. A malware attack in 2019 prompted several changes in the business, including a corporate name change and a new retail strategy which resulted in the OFR store.

“Part of the strength of our group is the diverse business models of our members. Whether they have a single store or a multi-store chain, each operation gets one share of stock in our cooperative,” said Andrew Kauffman, CEO of Furniture First. “We design our programs to appeal to both formats and give equal weight to each operation. Scalable benefits produce the results. Everybody needs merchandise at sharp prices. Everybody needs consumer financing. When we work together for these things, everybody wins.”

About Furniture First: Furniture First is a cooperative national home furnishings and mattress buying group serving full line independent retailers with sales over $2 million. Collectively, the group sells $2.8 billion at retail with their approved merchandise programs in the 512 member storefronts. Furniture First occupies showrooms in Las Vegas (B530) and High Point (IHFC G-770) where they display products from several of the group’s approved vendors. For more information on Furniture First Membership, visit www.FurnitureFirst.coop/join or call 800-411-3477. For more information, visit www.FurnitureFirst.com.