For the past 35 years, Alabama Furniture has served Houston as the premier source for showroom-condition secondhand designer furniture and antiques. Find designer brands that include Bernhardt, Baker, and Thomasville, plus mainstream store inventory from Restoration Hardware, Arhaus, and West Elm for over 50 percent off — every day of the week.
Proprietor Sherri Enroth, colloquially known as “Sofa Sherri,” opened her savvy-shopper staple on West Alabama in 1991. Commercial development in 1996 caused Enroth to relocate the store to 22nd and Yale in The Heights — where Alabama Furniture remained for 20 years — before settling into its current Independence Heights location in 2016.
Alabama Furniture is technically a fast-paced consignment store, with the bulk of the inventory coming from fellow Houstonians. The remainder is sourced from store liquidations and surplus inventories from furniture stores and showrooms. Enroth sells to everyone from the design trade to one-off looky-loos; even Round Top retailers source inventory from the store. However, it’s what Enroth calls the “TikTok effect” that has caused Gen Z to “discover” the store — while embracing thrifting as an environmentally-conscious lifestyle choice — and welcome an entirely new clientele.
“With the younger generation, the new keyword is ‘thrifting,’” says Enroth. “You’re not out shopping resale shops, you’re out thrifting! And thrifting is getting that find at the best possible price — getting more for less. It sounds cliché, but why would you shop retail? In here you can shop brand new, 50 percent off or more, and take it home or have it delivered the same day.”
The concept of purchasing brand new furniture below wholesale is what attracts interior designers and retailers to Alabama Furniture. The store lists its entire inventory online, and ships as well. Recently, a client filled an entire truck to furnish a second home in a remote area of Colorado. According to Enroth, this type of thing happens all of the time. Buyers even fill shipping containers to send overseas to stock their own stores with brands and items unavailable in their local markets.
“It’s cheaper than wholesale. So even if you can buy wholesale, or you get a 20 percent trade discount at Ladco, we’re still cheaper,” says Enroth. “Go out to any one of those big brand stores and look at their prices, then come back here and we will be best friends.”
What’s more, she means it. Clients of Alabama Furniture have been repeat buyers for decades, which Enroth loves: “I know my customers, I know their kids, and now I even know their grandkids. It’s wonderful.”
Enroth hails from a long line of furniture enthusiasts. Her grandparents owned the iconic Red Barn Furniture in Denver, and her interior designer father owned the eponymous Tim Hamrock Furniture in Highland Village. “It’s in my blood. I was cursed from birth,” she says with a laugh. Her keen eye for quality is what has kept Alabama Furniture alive for nearly four decades. As it says on the sign out front, “There’s no sale, like resale!”
The store is bursting with new and like-new furniture on any given day, but approximately 10 percent of the inventory is antique or period specific. “I get more of the collectibles, like Murano and certain types of art glass, certain china [and barware],” says Enroth. As for 30s, 40s, MCM, and retro pieces, “That sells quick!”
When it comes to Alabama Furniture being plucked by furniture flippers prior to the Round Top antiques fairs, Enroth doesn’t mind at all: “They do whatever with their prices. Most of those people do it for a hobby. So, if you go out and sell a couple of pieces, you’ve paid for your trip — so why not overprice it?”
Just keep in mind when you pick a piece of vintage from a field this October, that it could have come from Alabama Furniture — for less!
Courtesy of Alabama Furniture
Visit “Sofa Sherri” in Independence Heights.
