Presley's Furniture Closing After More Than Four Decades

TUSCALOOSA, AL — A beloved family-owned business in Tuscaloosa is closing its doors for good after more than four decades.

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Presley's Furniture, located at 2719 McFarland Boulevard East, is in the process of a Fourth of July Going-Out-Of-Business Sale after first opening up shop in the early 1980s.

Co-owner Scott Presley, who joined his brother Todd in taking over the family business from their parents, looked back on 44 years in the furniture business in an interview with Tuscaloosa Patch and reflected on its original location before the current building was constructed.

"I've got a picture of the original building," he said. "We started out in a different building, which was actually sitting in the parking lot of our business now, over to the right. And then we built the new building 25 years ago. We tore the old one down and then paved the parking lot over there, so it's kind of how we evolved from a smaller place to a larger place."

The soon-to-be vacant 10,750-square-foot property on McFarland Boulevard is listed by Right Space Commercial, which says the location features ample parking, a large sign band on the building's exterior and a loading dock.

Right Space also touted the building's showroom, with its high ceilings, stained concrete floors and recent lighting upgrades.

Click here to learn more about the property.

"We've built a lot of relationships over the years," Presley said. "We've got a lot of return customers and have just made a ton of friendships with everybody in the community. That's probably been the saddest thing — all the people coming in and we've had people stopping by just to give us hugs and tell us how much they were going to miss us."

When reflecting on the relationships forged in the community over the years, Presley said the memories were too plentiful to pick out any one instance.

"We've had quite a few customers who are almost like family to us that have passed away through the years that we've really missed," he said. "And their kids are coming in now and shopping with us."

The retail sector has changed dramatically since Presley's parents first opened up the business in the early 1980s, with brick-and-mortar retail suffering the most with the advent of online shopping.

For Presley's Furniture, however, it's stood the test of time thanks to its community values and attention to customer service.

"The cool thing about the furniture business is the internet has not affected us the way it has a lot of other businesses," Presley explained. "Yeah, it has affected us in some ways, like you got lamps and rugs and stuff like that that people can just order and have shipped right to their house. But it's kind of hard to get a sectional sofa or a sofa chair, stuff like that, just shipped directly to your house and be cost-efficient."

Presley then said, despite all of the economic turbulence in the retail sector, their business has still been able to top internet prices on the aforementioned kinds of furniture

"We've been super successful and going out now probably is more successful than we've ever been in the last few years," he said. "So I guess you'd say we're going out on top."

The topic of legacy then came up in conversation with Presley as his family's business plans to close its doors after roughly a generation of serving the community and surrounding area.

Presley mulled over the question before providing a simple answer.

"I'd just like it to be that we really cared about our customers," he said. "Our thing was that we built relationships. Customer service is what we've built our business on for all these years. So, we just believed if you took care of all your people that they would come back and see you."

Looking ahead to the next chapter, Presley said he is looking forward to traveling and spending time at his new home in the country.

Presley explained that while his family are RV enthusiasts who plan to burn up the highways in their future travels, his first retirement trip will be to attend his son's wedding in the Dominican Republic.

"I would just love to thank everybody who has patronized us over the years and just tell them how much we love them," he said. "We've got hundreds of customers who are just like family. I mean, they come in, they hug us, they love on us. I think that's really cool. You don't see many businesses like that."

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