Hobby Lobby Raising Minimum Wage to $10 Hourly
| April 21, 2009 | Posted by Roshawn Watson under Uncategorized |
By: Roshawn Watson
A spokeswoman for the company said that Hobby Lobby “had a profitable year, and (they) want(ed) to pass that on to their employees.”
Image Credit: Peter Broderick
Costs and Current Sales
This move will cost an additional $10-$15 million per year and will raise some of their full-time employee salaries by as much as $600 monthly. Fortunately, their revenue last year was $1.8 billion, and their projected sales for 2009 is $2 billion. In fact, analysts believe that Hobby Lobby has even benefited from the recession, as many people choose arts and crafts projects in lieu of more expensive activities.
Background and Future Directions
Overall all, the privately-held company has over 400 stores (including Mardel and Hemispheres) and over 18,000 employees. Currently, the store has locations in 33 states.
In 2009, Hobby Lobby plans to open 25 stores and will create 1000 new jobs across the country.
CEO and founder, David Green, recently said “our employees are the backbone of our company, and we believe that giving them the opportunity to share in our success is the right thing to do. This is part of our continuing efforts to reward our employees for their hard work and integrate them into the growth of our company.”
Green is a true American success story. Green is of very humble origins and never finished formal schooling past high school. He is the son of a poor minister and started the arts and craft giant with a $600 loan in 1972. Presently, he is now one of the richest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of over $1 billion.
With the interminable focus on bad financial news that plagues most media, today it is great hear of companies (such as Walmart and Hobby Lobby) that are thriving in spite of (possibly because of) the recent economic turmoil. Moreover, the fact that Hobby Lobby is sharing the wealth with the employees that helped them create the wealth is a great model that would serve many businesses well to learn from.
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It is nice to see when staff, the backbone of a company, get rewarded. It seems to be rare if one listens to the constant gloom and doom in the media.
I agree Anja. It's great to see companies rewarding their employees in times like these. Even when the market is bad, companies should have a keen eye to taking care of their employees and their loyal customers. Forgoing either to meet "the bottom line" can be deadly. Case in point, I recently made a sizable purchase from a company. When I realized they weren't going to meet their published delivery date and stick to their policy of having orders processed within in 24 hr, I canceled the order. I was told that I would be slapped with a $10 fee for canceling the order as this was their policy. I requested that they not invoke this policy since they weren't sticking to their policy on processing and delivery dates in my case. Even after reminding them that I had planned to do much more business with them in the future, they would not withdraw the fee. I promptly canceled the order and resolved not to work with them again. They chose to lose out on hundreds of dollars worth of business and my recommendation to friends & family in favor of a $10 fee and enforcing one policy while lapsing on another policy. Not the brightest in the bunch!
By doing this in the middle of recession, they are demonstrating that their internal customers (employees) are just as important to them as their external customers. I say Bravo to this kind of servant leadership.
Hobby Lobby is one of my sister's favorite stores. I personally, have never even stepped foot in one. I may now. I do a lot of arts and crafts like my sister, but tend to use older mom and pop shops to buy supplies.
Hello! This post could not be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my good old room mate!
He always kept talking about this. I will forward this page to him.
Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!