About Josh Hudson
Born the same year as the opening of his father’s first furniture store, Josh literally grew up inside a Hudson’s Furniture store. A native to Florida, Josh attended Bolles High School in Jacksonville and would go on to graduate from the University of Florida with a degree in Business. While Josh’s main focus was his education, he took advantage of attending Officer Candidate School with the US Marine Corps (2002) and even took an internship at City Furniture.
While interning he received the top intern award and finished #1 in sales among all associates at the Pembroke Pines City Furniture location (2003).
Josh was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity house and during college, he also worked at a locally owned Ashley Furniture store. While there he worked his way up from part-time sales to become the Assistant Manager. Josh then relocated back to Sanford FL to work in the operations of Hudson's Furniture taking on a full-time role leading the West Coast of FL delivery operations. Since this operation required the trucks to be pre-loaded and shipped over to the Tampa area the night before the delivery it presented several complications that had to be navigated. When the delivery driver is not loading his own truck, this introduces many variables.
Meanwhile, the Hudson's chain expands to open up 4 new locations in Atlanta, GA. The company partnered with long-time manufacturing partner Broyhill to use some of its vacant factory space in Hickory, NC as a distribution center for the Atlanta sales operation. Josh was again tasked with a complete startup of operations in NC. "We took a vacant factory, some makeshift racks, and an employee base that consisted of all factory workers and built a delivery operation. It was not easy at all and during the startup, it required months of 15 hour plus days." This location required that drivers preloaded a truck with 2 days’ worth of deliveries and slept in the delivery truck. As you can imagine, the margin for error is small and the time it would take to solve issues that required going back to the distribution center added a high level of complexity to the operation.
After spending close to 1 year working on operations, Josh was asked to get more involved in Sales in the Atlanta area. At first, he partnered with another outside consultant to build a strategy and increases sales in the 4 Atlanta locations. After 6 months of working with the consultant, Josh took over as the full-time General Sales Manager of the Atlanta area. He grew sales at the 4 locations to 24M a year right at the crash of the housing market in 2009.
With sales falling in the FL stores and not growing at a strong enough rate in Atlanta, the Hudson family was forced to make some hard decisions. Ultimately the decision was to close down Atlanta. From there Josh was asked to come back to FL and help with sales. This began the company's long journey through a Chapter 11 restructuring in which Josh would eventually be appointed as CEO of Hudson’s Furniture.
Josh’s knowledge of the entirety of Hudson’s empire is vast as he has held every position from warehouse, delivery, service tech, delivery manager (West Coast), operations manager, general manager, President, and now CEO. Under Josh’s reign, overall sales for Hudson’s Furniture Stores has grown exponentially from around 35M in 2009 just before he took over in March of 2010, to today’s number of around 90M and counting.
As with most of us, Josh takes infinite pride in his home and Hudson’s has been his home since before the day he was born. A very involved leader, Josh exemplifies the meaning of a true leader who remains involved, invested and interested in his employees, the image of Hudson’s and most importantly those customers who come in looking for Hudson’s to help create not just a room, but a home and a lifestyle that truly embodies each unique personality.
Retailer of the Year - 2017
Most Charitable Young Professional of the Year - 2018