The Alabama Retail Association and Alabama Retail Comp are both fully operational and serving our members. View the latest coronavirus news, orders, guidance and resources for Alabama businesses.
Coronavirus Resources
Editor’s Note: Throughout the current pandemic, small Alabama retailers and other businesses have limited operations in ways that comply with the state’s stay-at-home order to keep at least a reduced number of Alabamians employed. Their primary concern continues to be…
Jim Longshore raced motocross in the ‘60s and ‘70s before beginning to sell Triumphs and Kawasakis as a sales rep for those brands. In March of 1975, he purchased an existing Honda motorcycle dealership in Florence and became his own…
In 1999, Bette Powell was on the tennis court when she learned the current owner wanted to close The Cook Store in Mountain Brook. She immediately thought of her daughter. At the time, Bette’s daughter, Wesley Powell Lassen, was working…
“We serve our customers in such a way that we will have the opportunity to do it again,” said Mike Vinson, president of Adams Drugs, a 12-store family owned regional pharmacy serving 60,000 patients in the River Region. “My parents…
James H. Dunklin IV grew up in Greenville, Alabama – just like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, all also named James H. Dunklin. That kind of intertwining of a family and a place has a powerful pull. “I could…
“My first job in retail, other than stocking shelves in high school, was with Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Chicago,” said Todd Noden, the Alabama Retail Association’s 2020-2021 board chairman. That planning and budget position with one of America’s oldest…
Another key to Metzger’s longevity: Loyal employees selling quality men’s and women’s apparel and furs Brothers Melvin and Leonard Metzger opened what was then known as Metzger Brothers in 1919 inside The Battle House, a still-operating hotel in downtown Mobile….
Lynn Bradakis wanted a special frame for a photo of her 6-month-old daughter, Taylor. When she couldn’t find what she wanted in any store, she designed and made the frame herself. When her friends saw her creation, they asked Lynn…
When April and Lacy McClung’s two sons had the opportunity to be student ambassadors to China and Europe, they didn’t know how they would pay for the trips, so the family held hands as Lacy prayed. April recalls that after…
When Gina and Darrin Swan first laid eyes on a nearly century-old building on downtown Dothan’s South Foster Street, they knew it had to be saved. The three-story brick building, known to locals as the old Carmichael building, had been…