First, I want to start by thanking Mrs. Flossip for letting me be a guest blogger. I really appreciate it – I love reading the Flossip and all that she writes about. It has become my go-to website when I want to find out about an event that’s going on in Florence.
Now let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew Cannon and I work at Tomlinson Sales Company which is at 1309 East Palmetto Street (about a half mile past McLeod if you’re headed towards the airport). I grew up in Florence, went to Florence Christian for most of my school years, but I graduated from The Kings Academy. Like my sister (Aron Smith) who guest blogged a few weeks ago, I never thought that I would come back to Florence once I graduated high school. But I was wrong and I’m glad that I was. My wife (who was also raised in Florence) and I now live in Florence and we’re expecting our first child in June. In addition, both sets of parents live in Florence as well as my brother and his wife and their children and my sister and brother-in-law and their children. Now I don’t know if I will ever move out of Florence.
The reason why I came back to Florence in the first place was to work at Tomlinson’s. After graduating from USC in 2006 I came back to work here. Tomlinson’s was started in the late 1920′s by my great-grandfather right at the start of the great depression. He risked everything that he had at the time, and through his hard work as well as the hard work of many other family members and good friends, Tomlinson’s has grown into not only a great place to shop but a great place to work as well. If you’ve never been to one of our stores (we have nine locations – see them all at TomlinsonSales.com) you’re in for a real treat when you come in. We are basically a discount department store with a hometown feel to it. We are still family-owned and have many family members who work here. The people who aren’t related by blood still feel like family because they’ve been here for so long. We’ve got many people who have been working here for 30+ years. We sell first quality merchandise that you use every day: jewelry, clothes, domestics (bedding/bath/kitchen), housewares, gifts, infants, and we even sell some hunting items. One important note – we are open on Monday-Friday from 9am until 6pm. We aren’t open on Saturday’s except in November and December and then it is only from 9am until 1pm. We don’t play games with our prices either – when we get an item in we go ahead and mark it as low as we can reasonably sell it for and that’s it. We don’t have sales and we very rarely take markdowns on anything – we just set the price right the first time and let the products and prices speak for themselves. We buy directly from over 1,000 top manufactures and have been buying from many of them for a long time – the relationships that we have built up allow us to offer prices that no one else can match. We do not advertise very much either – we run one ad in She Magazine every October, November, and December. Other than that we use word-of-mouth from our great customers to help us. This in turn helps you too – by keeping our prices down.
This month’s theme for the Flossip is design/decor, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on. We sell lots of home decor products – and we get in new merchandise all the time. We actually just got back from the Gift & Home Furnishings Market in Atlanta about two weeks ago and the new merchandise is starting to roll in now. If you shop with us you will find many of the same home decor items that you see in a lot of the other boutiques in Florence, only at a lower price. In addition to our large selection of home decor merchandise we also have a great bedding department. Our most popular bedding line right now is a line of quilts from C&F Enterprises. We stock about 10 patterns in the store, but we have a catalog that you can look through that has over 150 patterns in it that are available for special orders. The best part is that the quilts ship from Virginia, so it generally only takes about a week to a week and a half for you to receive your quilt. We also have a large selection of comforters & bedspreads – including the William and Mary Bedspread from the Williamsburg collection that is a timeless classic.
As an example of what you might save by shopping with us, a William & Mary Queen bedspread from Belk will run you $200. When they are having a sale on it their sale price is $149.99. Our price, every day, is $124.50 for the exact same bedspread. The pillow shams from Belk are $54 each and $39.99 when they are on sale – we sell them for $26.50 each. So using the above as an example if you buy a queen bedspread and two shams you would save over $50 – even off of their sales prices.
In addition to the bedding, you will also find great prices on drapes, valances, accent pillows, sheets, and towels (you have to check out the new Micro Cotton towels – once you use one you’ll never go back to a regular towel). Most of the monogrammed garden flags that you see all over town also come from us. I could go on and on about ways we can save you money – but the best way to find out is for you to come out and visit us.
So please do come in and take a look around at what we have to offer and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. When you come in please come see me too – I’d love to meet you. Just ask for Andrew and anyone will be glad to come get me. You can reach me by email at andrewATtomlinsonsalesDOTcom or you can call me at 843-669-1854 anytime we are open.
Thanks again for Mrs. Flossip for allowing me to be a guest blogger today, and thanks to you for reading. I hope to see you soon!
-Andrew Cannon
andrew@tomlinsonsales.com
(843) 669-1854
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Enjoyed your post Andrew! As you know…..my smiling face is a common site at Tomlinson’s……as was my mother’s and my grandmother’s when they were living. Can’t beat the quality or the prices!
LOVE this post! I am so proud of how Tomlinson’s began and all that it is today, and so happy that Andrew is now there. It’s the BEST place in Florence to shop. Definitely check it out!