Brandon Co.

Brandon Co. is 103 years old, but the past eight years have been its most dynamic.

The wholesale floor covering distributor was founded in 1903 to sell hardware and horse tack to railroad companies. Now headquartered at 401 Vine St. in downtown North Little Rock, most of its existence was spent in the downtown Little Rock building that is now the Clinton Museum Store.

E.C. Willmon began a 41-year career at Brandon in 1957, and when the owner died in 1977, Willmon and Charles Steed bought the company from his widow. That’s about the time Willmon’s teenage son, Steve Willmon, started working in the warehouse. When Steed retired in 1985, the Willmon family bought Steed’s interest.

By the mid-1990s, it was clear that Brandon Co. either had to grow or sell out, said Steve Willmon, president of the company since 1998. But attempts to expand were fruitless until May 1998, when a supplier told Willmon that the owners of Montgomery & Co., which operated similar warehouses in Memphis and Nashville, Tenn., were ready to sell.

After 95 years as a one-location business, Brandon Co. suddenly had three.

The next year, Willmon opened a warehouse in Baton Rouge, La. And in 2000, Brandon Co. expanded into Jackson, Miss. — a strategic midpoint between Memphis and Baton Rouge.

Brandon still employs about 30 in North Little Rock, but its total work force is now 88. Instead of sales in the $9 million range, as in 1994, sales last year were more than $50 million.

And continued growth is assured, especially in Baton Rouge, thanks to Hurricane Katrina.

“That has been a terrible situation down on the coast, but an absolute boom for our business,” Willmon said.

Brandon Co. is owned by brothers Steve, Jonathan and Jason Willmon and partner Bryan Tull, but the Brandon name lives on.

“I’m not pompous enough to change the name of a business that’s more than 100 years old,” Steve Willmon said. “You start messing with things that work and it stops working.”

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