COLUMBUS, Miss. — After nearly 100 years in business, the Johnston Tombigbee Furniture (JTB Furniture) factory will cease operations in February.

The business, which was family-run from 1932 until it was sold to Prime Hospitality in 2024, manufactured furniture for residential and hospitality markets.

Jim Donnelly, president of Prime Hospitality, told the Columbus Dispatch that the decision was difficult, but long anticipated. “We don’t like for any operation that we had big plans for to cease,” Donnelly told The Dispatch. “That was one thing that really kept us from doing this before. To be honest, the writing had been on the wall for a while that this is something that may need to happen."

While operations will end in Columbus, Donnelly said furniture bearing the JTB logo will continue to ship from Prime Hospitality facilities in Saltillo and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. 

The Columbus factory, which once furnished tens of thousands of hotel rooms nationwide, was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting its workforce of nearly 200 people in half and operating just 165 days in 2020, according to The Dispatch. The company’s workforce has dwindled to 18 employees, six of whom plan to retire. The remaining 12 will stay on temporarily to ship remaining inventory, and Donnelly said Prime Hospitality is also assisting employees in finding new jobs.