40-year old Office Furniture company closes their doors

After being in the furniture business for almost four decades, Cook’s Office Furniture is making arrangements to shut and lock up their doors for good.

Owner of the office furniture company, Jan Cook Kendrick, daughter of the late founder Dempsey Cook, has sold the company’s 12,000-square-foot warehouse and showroom located on the University Lane, south of the intersection of 35th Street and Greensboro Avenue.

The new owner is Billy Blakeney of the Blakeney Co. She is now leasing the space until the residual inventory can be sold. Blakeney has hopes in finding a comparable business to occupy the location and speaks of offering the furniture office and warehouse to a new tenant in the near future.

Kendrick acquired the office furniture business after her father’s death in 2003. As the sole full-time employee, closing the furniture office will allow her to spend more time, something she values and believes she can’t get back, with her family. She claims that family is more important than the furniture office that she didn’t start, which doesn’t mean that the resolution was reached dispassionately. Kendrick still acknowledges the fact that the furniture office has been her father’s life and she will be affected as soon as all the office furniture inventory are sold.

Cook started the office furniture business as the Office Supply Co. back in 1969, handling all tasks of the furniture office himself and using a taxi company for deliveries. And for the next 35 years, Cook gone through two relocations, the emergence of big chain office supply stores, a bout with cancer and two catastrophic building fires that nearly wiped out his business, all of which he survived save one. Though, that tenacity was his defining characteristic, it was not enough to overcome his second battle with cancer. At the age of 76, Cook succumbed to lymphoma.

The customers of the office furniture business ranged from institutions like Druid City Hospital, now DCH Regional Medical Center, and Bradford Health Services drug treatment centers, small businesses and even private homes, offering both executive office furniture, reception furniture and home office furniture.

At the time of his death, Kendrick, who renamed the company Cook Office Furniture Inc., decided she would commence the office furniture business instead of selling it to pay off the office furniture company’s financial obligations. She then expanded the business to include consignment sales and set about adjusting to her new career.

Kendrick said she managed to pay off the debts, but that rigid rivalry from national office furniture and supply chains made it hard to keep the business cost-effective. She also realized later on that it was more of a triumph and tribute to Cook.

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40-year old Office Furniture company closes their doors

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