Barbara

"One of our most enduring categories is the product line that started it all for Barbara and me: frames. The small picture frames we made in the beginning were strictly a craft item. Customers would use them to hold small paintings for a grouping on the wall. Then a wholesale company (the same one that sold us that first frame-chopper machine) wanted to get out of the ready-made frame business. The owner sold us a forty-foot truckload of inventory for $2,000. We had no way to store this much in our small facility, so we parked the trailer out front and began running newspaper ads for a big sale. We spread some frames out on the lawn, while the rest could be seen by climbing up a ladder into the back of the trailer. (Fortunately, nobody slipped and fell and sued us!) It turned out to be a tremendous success; we netted five or six times our investment. So we bought another truckload for $4,000, and a third for $8,000, still managing to be profitable. This showed us the potential of large, ready-made frames. It’s still one of our mainstays. Today we stock every size from 2 x 3 inches to 24 x 36 inches. Granted, frames consume a lot of floor space, and they come in lots of different styles. But people will always want to hang a picture of their child or their mother on the wall, and Hobby Lobby will always be there to help them."