Small Beginnings

It all began with a fire.

The Hudson Salvage company of today arose over sixty years ago out of the ashes of adversity, after a fire at our grandfather, H. C. Hudson's grocery store in Palmer's Crossing, Mississippi. Mr. Hudson asked the insurance adjuster what he was going to do with the smoke-damaged groceries and he in turn sold them back to Mr. Hudson. The next day Mr. Hudson ran a fire sale - "Smoky Groceries, 50% off," and the Hudson Salvage retail concept was born. From then on, he diligently searched the country for similarly distressed products that he would in turn sell in his Mississippi store at a heavily discounted price.
 

Palmer's Crossing was the beginning of what would prove to be a bargain hunter's haven.

NEXT GENERATION

His son Billy Hudson came into the salvage business in 1957 and opened his first store in Magee, Mississippi. He continued to build the family business through his growing network of salvage-purchase relationships and the opening of more stores.

Billy had a strong work ethic, leadership skills and a true entrepreneurial ability to make a deal happen. He continued to build Hudson's one deal and one relationship at a time. Billy retired in 1996 and is now enjoying a life of ranching, politics and consulting.
 

TREMENDOUS FUTURE

Bill is very grateful for the foundation his grandfather, the late H. C. Hudson, and father, Billy C. Hudson, Sr. left.

"Hudson's is a company with a vision; as we believe that we are destined to become the ultimate extreme value retail company by the grace of God."

Over the years, the business model was expanded to include purchases form retailers and wholesalers with inventory problems such as customer returns, closeouts, overruns, irregulars, out-of-season merchandise, bankruptcies and freight or warehouse damaged goods.  With this expanded supply of merchandise the need arose for a different avenue of merchandise liquidation; hence, the Dirt Cheap business model was created.

In it's humble beginnings Dirt Cheap merchandise was primarily limited to the 'tail-ends' of salvage deals that the original Hudson's Salvage outlets had packaged up and returned to the the warehouse in an effort to make room for new deals.  However, as the inventory from the new stream of merchandise steadily increased, so did the percentage of goods other than salvage that was funneled into the Dirt Cheap stores.

Hudson's is the leading purchaser of retail salvage merchandise in the USA. The insurance salvage market, even though flexible from year to year, is very limited, however, "We simply do it better, faster, and cheaper than any of our competitors."

Hudson’s sells brand name merchandise at substantial savings to our customers. We purchase merchandise from the insurance industry that may be damaged due to fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, earthquake or other acts of nature. Hudson's will also buy any retail product that is someone else's problem, such as closeouts, bankruptcies, freight salvage, end of season merchandise, irregulars and more. Anything that doesn't flow through the normal distribution channels is Hudson's specialty.

Today Hudson's is a mature and prosperous company with over 35 retail stores of more than 490,000 square feet and over 700 associates.