Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby is a chain of retail arts and crafts stores based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, formerly called Hobby Lobby Creative Centers. The stores are managed by direct corporate hires.

History

David Green opened the first Hobby Lobby store, in a 300-square-foot (28 m²) space in northwest Oklahoma City, in 1972. Retail sales were $3,200 from August to the end of the year.He moved to a larger 1,000 square foot space in January 1973. A second store in Oklahoma City opened in 1975, and a store opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma the next year. It grew to seven stores by mid 1982, and the first store outside Oklahoma opened in 1984.

By the start of 1989, the chain had about 15 stores. By late 1992, it had grown to 50 locations in seven states, and its growth continued to accelerate. Its 100th store opened in August 1995, and its 200th in August 1999. By March 2002, that number had grown to 281 stores in 24 states, and 310 by October 2003.

As of April 2015, the chain has 600 stores nationwide with the headquarters building in a 3,400,000-square-foot (320,000 m²) manufacturing, distribution, and office complex.

Hobby Lobby (disambiguation)

Hobby Lobby may refer to:

Charley Weaver's Hobby Lobby

Charley Weaver's Hobby Lobby was a half-hour television interview show produced by Allan Sherman and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and broadcast weekly in the United States by the ABC network 8–8:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time) on Wednesdays in the 1959–60 television season.

History

The show premiered on September 30, 1959. Cliff Arquette, in his Charley Weaver persona, hosted the show throughout the run of the series. For the first two months, the show was called Charley Weaver's Hobby Lobby, but on November 25, 1959, the name of the show was changed to The Charley Weaver Show.

The first episodes essentially followed the same format as the Hobby Lobby radio interview show hosted by Dave Elman and broadcast from 1937 to 1948: people, both celebrities and not, were interviewed about their hobbies, both unusual and not. However, at the end of November (and perhaps earlier), "variety and comedy sketches" had been added, and hobby discussions were dropped. Charley Weaver's "Letters from Mama" monologues concerning daily life in the fictional town of Mount Idy were always part of the show, with the other members of the cast playing characters referred to in the letters.