Cook’s Office Furniture sells its Family business in Tuscaloosa

Jan Cook Kendrick, owner and daughter of the late founder Dempsey Cook of Cook’ Office Furniture, 40 years in operation is closing the company which has a 12,000-square-foot warehouse and showroom on University Lane, just south of the intersection of 35th Street and Greensboro Avenue.

Jan Cook Kendrick is leasing the space that the company is built in until the time that the rest of the inventory has been sold-out from Billy Blakeney of the Blakeney Co. which would practically take months. “We are going to offer the building for a new tenant in the very near future,” Blakeney said . He hopes to find a similar line of business to occupy the location.

“Closing will allow her to spend more time with family,” Kendick said, now in full control of the business after her father’s death from cancer in 2003, is the sole full-time employee. “Time, you can’t get that back,” she said. “Your family’s more important than something you didn’t start.” Which is not to say that the decision was an unemotional one. “This was my father’s life,” Kendrick said. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when it is gone.”

Cook, a one man team started the business as the Office Supply Co. in 1969. Resourceful as he is, hired a taxi company to deliver the goods. In the next 35 years, Cook persisted through two relocations, the materialization of big chain office supply stores, a bout with cancer and two disastrous building fires that nearly exhausted his business.

Patrons ranged institutions like Druid City Hospital, now DCH Regional Medical Center, and Bradford Health Services drug treatment centers, small businesses and even private homes. That persistence was Cook’s major attribute, Kendrick said.

Still, it was not enough to overcome his second battle with cancer. Cook succumbed to lymphoma at age 76. Cook, at the end of 73 years has left financial obligations so Kendrick made a decision that she would maintain and operate the business, instead of selling it.

She expanded the business to include consignment sales and set about adjusting to her new career. Kendrick renamed the company Cook Office Furniture Inc. “It was more of an achievement and kind of a tribute to him,” she said. Kendrick said she managed to pay off the debts, but that stiff competition from national office supply chains made it difficult to keep the business profitable. “The area is too small for this type business,” she said. Selling the business is painful but Kendrick sees a higher power at work.

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Cook’s Office Furniture sells its Family business in Tuscaloosa

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