Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, center, speaks with attendees at a private event in Fresno Monday night ahead of his keynote address at the Fresno-Clovis Prayer Breakfast Tuesday morning. Photo by Gabriel Dillard
When Hobby Lobby decided to open its first store in California, the Green family didn’t head for Los Angeles or San Francisco. They chose Visalia.
For a family-owned company deeply rooted in Oklahoma City’s conservative business culture, California had a reputation for being among the most challenging states for business, with a cultural and political landscape different from the company’s heartland roots. Hobby Lobby President Steve Green’s attorney wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea. Neither was his mother, Barbara Green.
“California was off limits,” Green joked to an audience in Fresno Monday night. “We weren’t ready to go into a foreign country.”
When they finally made the leap in January 2011, the Visalia store made an impression, setting a company record for first-store sales.
“California has been exceptional to us,” Green said. “The Valley is a good territory for us.”
Three more California locations followed that same fall. Today, Hobby Lobby operates 69 stores in California, the most recent opening just last Friday in Montebello, east of Los Angeles, in a former Big Lots location.
Green was speaking at a private event in Fresno Monday night ahead of his keynote address at the annual Fresno-Clovis Prayer Breakfast Tuesday morning, where he expanded on themes of faith, family and the unlikely journey of a business that started with a $600 loan in a garage making miniature picture frames.
Green was candid about moments that tested the company’s survival — economic downturns, COVID-19 and a landmark Supreme Court battle.
The legal fight centered on the company’s religious objections to a federal requirement that employers provide health insurance coverage for morning-after pills and IUDs — products the Green family considers a form of abortion. The battle ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 for Hobby Lobby’s in 2014. It was, Green acknowledged, a fight the family never wanted. Facing $1.5 million in daily fines for noncompliance, the legal battle, he said, “led us to sue the government that we love.”
Through it all, Green said the company’s guiding principle — set by his father, Hobby Lobby founder David Green — has remained constant.
“We are only stewards of what God has entrusted to us,” he said. “Live with an open hand with your business.”
About 2,650 people gathered at Tuesday’s prayer breakfast at the Fresno Convention Center, beginning at 7 a.m.