Georgia Furniture Mart Closes a Growing 40-Year Business

Georgia Furniture Mart is liquidating both Atlanta-area showrooms after 40 years, even after 2025 sales rose to an estimated $44.8 million. Founder Michael Hall and partner Tim Padden tied the shutdown to changing retail conditions and the sale of company properties, and they hired Planned Furniture Promotions to run the closeout.

Going-out-of-business sales began July 16, 2026, at 6694 Dawson Boulevard in Norcross and at 860 Cobb Place Boulevard NW, Suite 106, in Kennesaw. The Tucker distribution warehouse that fed next-day delivery is shutting down with them. No last day has been set, and the company has not said how many jobs go with the stores.

A Still-Growing Chain With Two Emptying Stores

The closeout is easy to read as a failed independent. The sales line does not match that reading. A 2025 ranking of 125 furniture and bedding retailers placed Georgia Furniture Mart at No. 115, with estimated sales of $44.8 million, up 2.1% from $43.9 million in 2024.

Those figures came after the company first landed on a national Top 100 list in 2021, on an estimated $41.4 million in furniture, bedding, and accessory sales in 2020 from the Norcross showroom alone. Kennesaw had not opened yet. The second store added volume. It did not reverse a slide, because the published numbers were still rising in the last full year before the liquidation.

SALES IN THE LAST PUBLISHED YEARS

Hall’s public goodbye did not mention falling revenue. He thanked customers who had trusted the stores with their homes and said the chapter was closing while the relationships would remain.

We are deeply thankful to everyone who has been part of this journey and entrusted us with their homes. While this chapter is coming to a close, the memories and relationships we’ve built will always remain.

Michael Hall, founder, company statement

The Owners Sold the Properties, Then the Inventory

Hall and Padden put two reasons on the record: an evolving retail market, and the sale of the company’s properties. The second reason is the one the markdown banners do not explain. A furniture chain can keep selling sofas after a bad quarter. It cannot keep a showroom after the building is sold out from under the floor samples.

The Norcross flagship sits on a 3.55-acre Dawson Boulevard parcel in Gwinnett County, a 92,000-square-foot showroom with an attached 20,000-square-foot outlet. Kennesaw is a 40,000-square-foot showroom in a numbered suite. Combined retail space is 152,000 square feet. The Tucker warehouse, built to move goods for more stores than they ever opened, is in the wind-down too.

Who bought the real estate has not been named. County-facing listings still described the Dawson occupant as Georgia Furniture Mart after the July announcement, which fits a sale that is pending, staged around a liquidation, or not yet on the public record. The company has not published a purchase price, a buyer, or a handoff date for the land.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The reasons given: Hall and Padden cited changing retail conditions and the sale of company properties as the basis for a permanent close.
• The sale operator: Planned Furniture Promotions is running going-out-of-business events at both showrooms, with public sales that began July 16, 2026.
• The third site: The Tucker distribution center that supported next-day delivery for online and store orders is shutting down with the stores.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The buyer: No purchaser, price, or closing date for the real estate has been released.
• The payroll: The company has not disclosed how many employees are affected.
• The last day: No firm date has been set for when the doors lock after the inventory is gone.

That mix is why the liquidation can run for months. The sofas have to leave before the buildings do. The July notice both showrooms would close already said the sale would last until the stock was sold, and that clock is still the only timetable on offer.

The Waterbed Shop That Became a Mart

Hall founded the business in 1986 as Underpriced Furniture. Early accounts of the shop describe a waterbed store that opened as that fad was already breaking, after which the partners kept hunting for a furniture niche that would hold. By the late 2010s the Norcross superstore was doing enough volume to justify a new warehouse and a new name.

The rebrand was announced in August 2019, with the Georgia Furniture Mart name phasing in that fall and the old logo due to drop in January 2020. Hall said some shoppers heard “Underpriced” as a used-furniture cue, not a value cue. Key suppliers named at the time included Ashley, Elements International, Homelegance, Jackson/Catnapper, Serta, and Simmons.

Padden came in as the partner who helped push the expansion. Together they talked about the company as one of the larger independent showrooms in the Southeast, and they backed veterans groups, youth programs, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the Atlanta area. The name on the building changed. The bet stayed the same: a huge in-stock floor, and trucks that could reach a house the next day.

Tucker Warehouse Was Meant to Feed Four Stores

The 2020 project was not a tidy little stockroom. Furniture trade coverage of the build put the new Tucker center at 164,000 square feet, with 40-foot ceilings and racking meant to replace a smaller warehouse near the Norcross store that was already full. The site was chosen for access to U.S. 78 and Interstate 85, so trucks leaving at dawn could make more than one metro drop before traffic locked up.

City of Tucker officials later profiled the operation on Greer Circle. Hall told them the building was 800 pieces of furniture a day on a normal stretch, and up to 1,000 on a heavy one. He also sketched a map that never got drawn in full.

We’re delivering and receiving furniture five days a week in the vicinity of 800 pieces per day…somedays up to 1,000. Come March, we expect to start off about 60 to 65 percent higher than that.

Mike Hall, owner, City of Tucker profile, September 2020

In that same 2020 talk, Hall said he planned four metro Atlanta stores, with Kennesaw next, and talked about pushing the warehouse toward 300,000 square feet as soon as late 2021. The four-store chain did not arrive. The doubled warehouse was a plan, not a later published fact. What did open was one more floor in Cobb County.

The 40,000-square-foot Kennesaw showroom at 860 Cobb Place NW opened April 15, 2022. Hall, then speaking as CEO, called it proof the company still wanted to reach the whole metro from more than one box. The store used vertical merchandising so more fabrics and frames could sit in the same footprint, and most goods were pitched as in stock for next-day delivery from Tucker. In May 2025 the company marked three years in Kennesaw. A year later both floors were in a going-out-of-business sale.

FROM WATERBEDS TO A CLOSEOUT

1. 1986: Hall founds Underpriced Furniture in the Atlanta area.
2. August 2019: The company announces a 164,000-square-foot Tucker distribution center and the Georgia Furniture Mart name.
3. 2020: The rebrand takes hold and the Tucker warehouse is running next-day delivery.
4. April 15, 2022: The 40,000-square-foot Kennesaw showroom opens, the second store on a map that had been described as four.
5. 2025: Estimated sales reach $44.8 million, good for No. 115 on a 125-retailer furniture ranking.
6. July 16, 2026: Planned Furniture Promotions opens public liquidation sales in Norcross and Kennesaw.

The warehouse was the tell. You do not pour a 164,000-square-foot racked building next to 78 unless you think more stores, and more daily deliveries, are coming. When the properties sold, that bet had nowhere to live.

152,000 Square Feet on the Markdown Clock

Planned Furniture Promotions, the promotional-sales firm that handles closeouts for furniture dealers, took both Atlanta floors. Tom Liddell, the firm’s senior vice president, treated the job as a sendoff for a retailer the trade already knew, not as a distress call from a chain that had missed payroll.

It’s an honor to help guide Georgia Furniture Mart through its final sale. The company’s commitment to customer service, its extensive selection and its involvement in the community have earned the respect of customers and the furniture industry.

Tom Liddell, senior vice president, Planned Furniture Promotions

The public sale that started July 16, 2026, was built to empty living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, rugs, and mattresses, including Sealy, Tempur-Pedic, and Stearns & Foster, while supplies lasted. Complete sets were priced to move. Markdowns were by item, not one storewide percent off. Ads for the event called the cuts sacrifice prices and told shoppers to take goods home the same day or book fast delivery.

HOW THE CLOSEOUT WAS SET UP

• Start date: Public liquidation opened July 16, 2026, at both showrooms, with no published lock date.
• Hours during the sale: Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday noon to 6 p.m., per the company’s sale posts.
• Stock: Floor samples and warehouse goods, including major mattress brands, with deeper cuts advertised again in late July.
• The third building: The Tucker center that made next-day delivery possible is part of the same wind-down.

By late July the company was posting that prices had been slashed again. By late August, people in Atlanta were still passing the sale along as a place to check before the floor was picked over. That is the sound of a liquidation that has lasted long enough to become a local errand, not a one-weekend rush.

What Shoppers Can Still Buy at Both Stores

Shoppers who walk into Norcross still enter one of the larger independent furniture floors in the metro, a 92,000-square-foot flagship plus the 20,000-square-foot outlet next door. Kennesaw is the smaller box at 40,000 square feet, the 2022 expansion that was supposed to be a second front, not a last one. Together they are 152,000 square feet of retail that PFP has been marking down until the rooms are bare.

THE TWO FLOORS BEING EMPTIED

As of early October 2026, the company’s website still showed a countdown clock for the closing sale. That is the only official timer. It does not name a final Sunday. It does not say what happens to special orders already in motion, or to warranties on goods sold in the last weeks, and the company has not filled those gaps in public. The practical instruction from the sale itself has been blunt: if you want the piece, take it now.

Mattress galleries, living-room sets, dining tables, and rugs have been the advertised bait. The Norcross outlet, which sat beside the main floor for years as a value annex for Gwinnett shoppers, is in the same drain. Once a SKU is gone, the posts say, it is gone.

Independents Are Getting Out While They Still Can

Georgia Furniture Mart’s own ranking year does not look like a company that ran out of sofas to sell. It looks like owners who had a buyer for the dirt, a specialist to empty the floors, and little appetite to keep feeding a 164,000-square-foot warehouse built for a chain that stopped at two stores.

Liddell, speaking later in 2026 about a wider run of furniture-store exits, said the old retirement script (age, health) was no longer the whole story. In the second quarter of 2026, trade coverage counted 17 retail operations closing or cutting locations, with owner retirements as the reason in most of those cases, and at least seven more first-quarter closings that also cited retirement.

They’re sick of the grind. It has significantly changed. They’re also sick of being the little guy. I think they’ve made the decision to get out while the getting’s good. They’re not broke because many of those companies have made money over the years, but they don’t want to keep putting money into the business.

Tom Liddell, senior vice president, Planned Furniture Promotions

He pointed to hiring and keeping salespeople as a standing problem, and said many lower- and mid-price independents were walking away even when the books were not empty. Haynes Furniture, in a separate September 2026 move, told vendors it would shut The Dump in Atlanta and five other U.S. markets, another big-box furniture floor coming off the local map. Hall and Padden did not use the word retirement. They sold the properties, then they sold the stock.

The last open fact is the same one the July release left hanging. There is still no date for the final lock on Dawson Boulevard or Cobb Place, and still no count of the people who staffed the trucks that once left Tucker before sunrise. The countdown on the company site is what remains of a four-store plan that peaked at two.