JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) – Discount building materials retailer Barton’s Home Outlet will open its first store in the region later this month at the Johnson City Crossings on Peoples Street, store manager Jimmy Fisher said Monday.
“The store will open by mid-November, and we will be planning a grand opening event for early March,” Fisher told News Channel 11.
Home Outlet has more than 100 stores in 19 states but is adding five to seven new stores annually, Fisher said. This one is going in the space at 3211 Peoples Street last occupied by electronics retailer H.H. Gregg.
Created last year when employee-owned Jonesboro, Ark.-based E.C. Barton and Co. combined its “Surplus Warehouse” and “Bargain Outlet” brands, Home Outlet sells materials for building, remodeling and restoration of kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, doors and windows.
Fisher said the Johnson City store has a team of four employees. He said the employee-ownership typically means employees have longer tenures than most retail locations. Because of that tenure and the ownership stake, he said, employees “offer more knowledge and experience when it comes to your building material or home project needs.”
Fisher himself has worked at nearly a dozen stores across four states since starting as a customer service representative in 2014 and working his way up to store manager. His last store was in Opelika, Ala.
He said the company looks “for markets that are also growing and that look similar to the markets where our stores are most successful” and added that “Johnson City presented as an excellent option.”
Hours will be 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. Home Outlet stores are closed Sundays.
Johnson City will be the company’s first location in Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia or Western North Carolina and its fourth Tennessee store.
The closest stores are in the Chattanooga metro, Spartanburg, S.C. and Charlotte and Winston-Salem, N.C.