History

A. L. Thompson Building Supplies Ltd., has been serving the needs of Grand Cayman since 1950 when Alfred Lawrence Thompson and Corinne Thompson established the retail business after having traded a fishing boat for lumber from Nicaragua. They stored and sold the lumber from their yard and quickly started meeting the additional building supplies needs of their customers. Within 17 years they had acquired land and constructed the Thompson Building in George Town.

Young A. L. Thompson, Jr., and his sister Berna Thompson acquired the business in the late 1970s and moved it from George Town to what had been the store's warehouse outside Industrial Park. As demands increased over the next 25 years, the Thompsons met them by constructing additional facilities near the main compound of A. L. Thompson's and then a satellite store in Savannah, Grand Cayman. Their biggest undertaking yet was the construction of the new mega store that is the keystone of A. L. Thompson's. Erected atop and around the old store without interruption of business, phase one of the new George Town store opened in October 2007 and phase two opened in November 2009. Now trading simply as A. L. Thompson's, we handle all types of building materials, including lumber, steel, windows and doors, paint, plumbing, electrical, and hardware, as well as housewares, yard supplies, and major home appliances.

A. L. Thompson, Jr., and Berna Thompson Cummins still own and operate the business, which occupies 130,000 square feet of air-conditioned shopping space at two locations plus an extensive lumberyard. Employing 100+ full-time staff, we maintain a multi-million-dollar inventory.

A. L. Thompson's Appliance Gallery is the exclusive Cayman Islands distributor of Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Miele, Sub-Zero, Wolf, and other major home appliances, and we offer full warranties on many as are given in the United States. Our Bath & Kitchen Gallery offers Kohler, Sterling, Delta, Brizo, Hansgrohe, Maax, Robern, Rubinet, and American Shower & Bath fixtures as well as Foremost bath furniture and cabinets from several manufacturers, with the services of interior designers to assist customers with their projects.

Among the extensive products at A. L. Thompson's are the high-quality Valspar paint line, Makita power tools, Stanley and other hand tools, PGT and Weather Shield windows and doors, Hunter, Westinghouse, and Monte Carlo ceiling fans and fixtures, Progress lighting, KitchenAid and Cuisinart counter-top appliances, Farberware utensils, Mikasa and Red Vanilla tableware, and Dalyn rugs.

Open for business six full days weekly, we enjoy an average of 1,200 customer transactions daily. We have a solid regular customer base from all three Cayman Islands, and that base is ever increasing with the constant construction boom and turnover of residents. Those customers range from contractors and handymen through homeowners and brides-to-be, so we truly are Your Home Store.

With the 2009 completion of the A. L. Thompson's George Town store, the 2014 addition of the Commercial Equipment Department, and the 2015 addition of the Outdoors, we may now serve our customers better and offer them a larger range of products at the best possible prices. That goal keeps our purchasing staff searching worldwide so that we can confidently and sincerely say to our customers that A. L. Thompson's is "the way to make a home."