Saluting a Titan – Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse

August 28th, 2025 by the STORIS Marketing Team

Furniture Today’s Trailblazers & Titans celebration at Las Vegas Market honored leaders who’ve materially shaped the home furnishings industry. Among the 2025 “Titans” was Jake Jabs, the entrepreneur who turned American Furniture Warehouse into a byword for scale, value, and no‑nonsense retailing. The celebration, held July 26 at Las Vegas Market, brought the industry together to salute the leaders who shaped how furniture is bought and sold.

Jabs’s story reads like a masterclass in staying power. Starting from a single store, he helped pioneer the high‑volume, big‑box model in home furnishings—an approach that married everyday pricing with relentless operational discipline. The American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame notes his insistence on simple, durable principles: honesty about the product, sharp pricing, and real knowledge at the point of sale. Those ideas sound plain; in practice, they require decades of unwavering execution.

AFW’s culture reflects that discipline on the ground. Associates understand the promise; systems support the pace; customers feel the result. Even in the age of e‑commerce, AFW’s playbook prioritizes clarity over gimmicks—make it easy to research, easy to buy, and dependable to deliver. A small footnote of pride from our vantage point: AFW and STORIS have worked together for decades, and Jabs has publicly emphasized the value of system stability in running a 362‑days‑a‑year, multi‑location operation—an operator’s metric if ever there was one. That steadiness is part of the AFW legend.

Recognition as a Titan isn’t about a single season of wins; it’s about a career spent raising the standard for everyone else. Congratulations to Jake Jabs and the entire AFW team. The “Titan” designation fits: steady leadership, clear principles, and results that have shaped how furniture retail gets done.