Bacon's Furniture, Red Mountain Retail Join Furniture First

January 8, 2020  by Laurie Northington in Business Strategy, Industry   

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. 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.”