Alex Malouf Jr. said he cried before announcing to the employees of Malouf Furniture Co. that he would be closing the store.
“It’s just heart-breaking for me to close it,” he said.
His age (he turns 82 in October) and lack of interest from his children in taking over the business, however, led him to conclude that it was time to shut down a 77-year-old Greenwood retailing institution.
“My four children all had their own careers going. All of them were very successful in what they were doing,” Malouf said. “Really no one in the family was interested in running Malouf Furniture in Greenwood. They love the store, they love the idea of it. They just didn’t want to get off in retail in Greenwood six days a week.”
The store will begin winding down with a going-out-of-business sale starting in mid-September. Thirty thousand letters will be going out to the store’s wide-ranging base of customers, inviting them to a private sales event Sept. 13-14.
The sale for the general public will begin Sept. 15.
“It will last until everything is gone,” Malouf said. He estimated that should take about 90 days.
Alex Malouf
Malouf Furniture began humbly in 1946 when Malouf’s father, Alex Malouf Sr., the son of Lebanese immigrants, opened a 2,500-square-foot store on Carrollton Avenue. He sold appliances and popular-priced furniture and would eventually expand the operation to about 7,500 square feet.
“We were doing OK, but we weren’t killing it,” remembered Alex Malouf Jr., who joined his father in the business after getting out of the Army in 1963. “It just wasn’t large enough for my family to make a good living out of it, and Dad was sending kids to college.”
In 1978, the son built a much larger store — initially 30,000 square feet, later expanded by another 10,000 square feet — at its current location on U.S. 82. He also began to upgrade its offerings.
A couple of years before the move, Malouf’s had begun to test the luxury market by adding some high-end upholstered furniture to its inventory.
At the time, Malouf said, there were at least eight high-end furniture stores in the Delta, including two already in Greenwood.
“My goal in life was to be one of those stores,” he said.
It took almost two years to get the new store the way he wanted it, Malouf said, but when he did, the business took off, eventually drawing from a roughly 75-mile radius that it still serves today.
“We did a lot of business. Volume went up. It was just tremendous the amount of volume we were doing,” he said.
By the 1990s, though, Malouf began to put most of his energy into the start-up company that eventually became John-Richard, a global manufacturer of luxury home furnishings. He left the day-to-day management of Malouf Furniture to his business partner and younger brother, Bill. Alex Malouf would later buy out his brother’s interest when Bill Malouf began his wholesale furniture business, Port Eliot.
In 2000, Alex Malouf also opened with his youngest son, Gardner, a second Malouf Furniture location in Foley, Alabama, on the fast-growing Gulf Coast of Alabama. That store, which covers 90,000 square feet of showroom and warehouses, has been extremely successful, but, according to Alex Malouf, it would not be feasible for Gardner Malouf to keep tabs on it and the store in Greenwood as well.
Alex Malouf sold John-Richard in 2020, and last year, he and his wife, Pat, permanently relocated to the Alabama Gulf Coast, residing in Fairhope.
When his store closes in Greenwood, it will be the final disappearance of high-end furniture outlets in the Delta, according to Malouf — a further reflection of the region’s declining population and wealth.
Although the store is still profitable, Malouf said, its sales volume has largely leveled off over the past couple of decades and depended increasingly on drawing clientele from farther away.
“I’m very thankful that we were able to stay open as long as we did,” he said. “I’m very indebted to the staff that has been running that store for the last many, many years. They’re just wonderful people.”
Bob Milam, who has been managing the store since 2007, said it has been an emotionally difficult time since the closure was announced on Thursday to the 13 employees.
“This is a family up here,” he said. “We’re a group that knows everything about everybody, our struggles and our successes and things like that in life. That’s going to be missed by all of us, I know.”
The closure will speed up his retirement, which was already planned for next year.
“I understand the decision by the Malouf family,” Milam said. “They’ve been wonderful to work for and work with. I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve done finishing this thing out after 77 years. I’m just thrilled to have been part of it.”
Malouf said once the store closes, he hopes to sell or lease the building, ideally to another furniture company. “The store is in a great location, and it’s got a good reputation. We’ll just have to see what we do with the building.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
