A Family Business

BY ED HOWELL, DAILY MOUNTAIN EAGLE
CARBON HILL — Jason Brown is opening JB’s Liquidation on Thursday, with the idea of taking overstock at major retailers and selling it for less to Carbon Hill residents.

Having worked for a number of years for Walmart, Brown has wanted to open a store for some time and will finally get his wish this week in a space at the Bill & Sons strip mall off Highway 118.

“Believe it or not, I started right at 30 years ago right next door at Bill & Sons, bagging groceries,” he said.

“My life-long ambition has been to come back to Carbon Hill and offer something back to my community,” Brown said. “This is my model. This is what I want to do — offer them higher-end products at lower prices so they don’t have to spend the money in Jasper. I would rather the money come back to Carbon Hill.”

Moreover, he said the location complements the idea of one-stop shopping, as people can come to one shopping complex for groceries, pharmacy needs and then other retail products, he said.

The 1991 Carbon Hill High School graduate lives outside Carbon Hill in the area between Townley and Jasper next to his parents, Howard and Judy Brown. He will turn 45 in February. He and his wife, Sue, will celebrate their 20th anniversary in April and have Jake, 17, a junior at Carbon Hill, and Tyler, 14, an eighth-grader at Carbon Hill. The family goes to First Baptist Church of Carbon Hill.

He eventually started work at Jitney Jungle in Fayette, becoming what he said was the youngest co-manager in the company. “When I moved up with them, I couldn’t go to an alcohol-selling store because I wasn’t 21 yet,” he said. He would go from Fayette to stores in such places as Millport and Russellville as a trouble shooter when problems arose.

When Jitney Jungle sold out to the major investment firm KKR, Brown went to work for Walmart in 1997. He started as an overnight stocker at the Jasper store and wound up later being a co-manager at the same site. “I’ve been a store manager at three different (Walmart) stores in Birmingham,” he said.

Brown stayed with the company for 20 years, leaving them Oct. 30, with the plan of going out on his own.

He has taken a 7,000-square-foot space at the Carbon Hill site, cutting that to 3,500 feet for the sales space. He compared the new retail store to Big Lots.

“What I do is I get closeouts,” he said. “I get marked down merchandise that they can’t move.” Larger well-known national retail chains then offer the items to him at a liquidated price for purchase. Brown will offer the best price so that the liquidated item can be sold for less than what it was at the original chain.

While the store is still a work in progress, a week before opening he already had stocked TVs, cell phones, stationery materials, clothes, small kitchen appliances, lawn equipment, and health items. In the back area, he even has some air conditioners and refrigerators for sale.

“I want to offer a variety of merchandise that they can get down the street at a national retailer,” he said, with a TV selling elsewhere for $200 maybe being sold for $150 at his store. He said TVs were already plugged up and running to be displayed.

“They can play with all the buttons they want to. They can say, ‘I want this TV,’ and we’ll box it up and they can take that TV,” he said.

Brown said he will start out with just himself, but has a goal eventually of five employees. Currently his goal is just to get the current store running well.

“Long-term, years down the road, I would like to make this more than just one store, but I’ve got to get my model the way I want it,” he said.

Credit and debit cards are accepted at the store, which will be open from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. It will be closed Sunday and Monday. His phone number is 205-924-6400 and his email is jasonhbrown1@me.com.