LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hobby Lobby: Hobby Lobby Stores
built 191 days ago
If something wicker this way comes, Hobby Lobby Stores may be the source. The firm operates about 400 stores in more than 30 states and sells arts and crafts supplies, baskets, beads, candles, frames, home-decorating accessories, and silk flowers. The #3 craft and fabric retailer (behind Michaels Stores and Jo-Ann Stores), it prefers to set up shop in second-generation retail sites (such as vacated supermarkets and superstores). Sister companies supply Hobby Lobby stores with merchandise, received from its Oklahoma distribution facility. CEO David Green, who owns the company with his wife Barbara, founded Hobby Lobby in 1972 and operates it according to biblical principles, including closing stores on Sunday.
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Though smaller than some of the other big craft retail chains, Hobby Lobby is growing rapidly into a regional crafts powerhouse. It now has stores in 30 states and make more than a billion dollars annually. Not bad for a store that started with 300 square feet in Oklahoma City 34 years ago!
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Based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Hobby Lobby Stores has 378 stores in 29 states and is one of America's fastest growing arts and crafts chains. The privately held company projects sales of $1.65 billion in 2006. Additional information about Hobby Lobby Stores is available at http://www.hobbylobby.com/ .
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Sales were good, and in the early 1980s, Hobby Lobby began expanding its reach with new store openings. By 1986, the company had 12 stores in operation. It ... began expanding the scope of their merchandise beyond the arts and crafts sector, adding such luxury goods as furniture, fine arts, expensive cookware, and luggage to their offerings. The move was intended to diversify interests and protect the company from fluctuations in different sectors. The move, however, nearly bankrupted the company. Green had seen luxury goods sales increase as the area's oil business boomed; when it went bust, the disposable income of many prosperous Oklahomans and Texans plunged.
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Arts and crafts king Hobby Lobby Stores operates over 390 stores in 32 states. The company's stores stock more than 60,000 items including arts and crafts supplies, fashion fabrics, baskets, silk flowers, party supplies, furniture and home accent. Chief Executive David Green founded the company 1972.
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At Hobby Lobby stores, the target market was, according to Green, a woman who wants to improve her home, a woman who appreciates a wide selection of interesting merchandise and enjoys the shopping experience. Moreover, the company sought to carry everything in home decorating and crafting, concluding that people wanted everything they needed to do a project under one roof. A wide selection of merchandise was therefore important. Hobby Lobby stores had entire departments devoted to crafts, art supplies, baskets, candles, cards and party items, fabrics, florals, frames, garden, hobbies (plastic models, trains, science projects), home accents, jewelry-making supplies, needlework, scrapbooking products, holiday items, small furniture, and wearable art. One of Hobby Lobby's most enduring product lines was its original forte, picture frames.
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