Hobby Lobby HQ & Distribution Center

[MadMonk]

Just wait till they put their ugly orange angled roof on.

You think spanish tile roofs are ugly? Meh, different strokes I guess.

[bluedogok]

They have opened a handful of stores here in California and much understanding is that they are absolutely blowing out their projected revenues.

HL is far better than Michael's or anything else we have out here. Probably true in most other markets as well.


They just seem to do a very good job in a niche that always seems to yield messy, cluttered stores. Hobby Lobby feels very different from their competitors, tha's for sure.

And has been discussed previously, they have made the business choice not to use bar codes! Very interesting approach that seems counter-intuitive but has proven to give them a competitive edge.

There was an article a few years back about that, Mr. Green lives by his TG&Y training. He said that relying on technology can leave gaps in product management, he would rather have a person responsible for a department or section for ordering by walking that section daily to see what is coming off the shelf. A person watching what is moving closely can spot trends happening in real time rather than pouring over spreadsheets 1,000 miles away. Especially with many of their items being stocked in limited quantities (like art supplies) the eyes on the floor seems more reliable to him.

You think spanish tile roofs are ugly? Meh, different strokes I guess.

Catch22 must not like Austin or Dallas then because there are a ton of them there, so much so that I got tired of doing the "Tuscan style" or Mission style buildings for awhile after doing so many of them.

[catch22]

I actually adore Spanish architecture. But when you have a half mile long stretch of "copy and paste" Spanish tiles... And plans to add even more.. Gets a little tiring. I doubt the Hobby lobby complex is award winning Spanish architecture either... It's Rick Dowell in method, but by the greens.

[MadMonk]

I actually adore Spanish architecture. But when you have a half mile long stretch of "copy and paste" Spanish tiles... And plans to add even more.. Gets a little tiring. I doubt the Hobby lobby complex is award winning Spanish architecture either... It's Rick Dowell in method, but by the greens.

Maybe the repetition is tiring, but it's in the same style as their stores. Not hating on your opinion, it just seems a bit unrealistic to expect something "award winning" in an industrial warehouse area. Warehouse are pretty boring, architecturally. At least the style they use sets their bland boxes apart from the other bland boxes in that area and goes along with their store's style.

[MadMonk]

I was going down SW 44th yesterday and caught a quick pick of the construction of the new building across from the Hobby Lobby warehouses.


I tried to get one of the construction on the corner of SW44h and Council but, unfortunately it turned out a little blurry.

[Rover]

There was an article a few years back about that, Mr. Green lives by his TG&Y training. He said that relying on technology can leave gaps in product management, he would rather have a person responsible for a department or section for ordering by walking that section daily to see what is coming off the shelf. A person watching what is moving closely can spot trends happening in real time rather than pouring over spreadsheets 1,000 miles away. Especially with many of their items being stocked in limited quantities (like art supplies) the eyes on the floor seems more reliable to him.

TG&Y was a client of mine years ago. There were some funny (pitiful) episodes where they would have slow or non moving items and the manager would blow them out at almost give away prices to get rid of them. Then the home office would ship even more because the sudden fast movement of the quantity would trigger an automatic replenishment...sometimes with even more. There are lots of reasons they failed, but this kind of "system" is one of them.

[catch22]

2003:



2013 (and a lot more about to be under construction):

[mschachle]

Does anybody know the Architect of Record is for the HQ building?

[Pete]

Does anybody know the Architect of Record is for the HQ building?

Mike Hughes Architects:

home

[Zuplar]

I'm really amazed out how fast this has gone up.

[Plutonic Panda]

I sent Pete a few pictures of this but he didn't post them. It was awhile back so it may be outdated, but it is a really nice facility and very big

[Pete]

Hobby Lobby just filed to build a huge $88 million warehouse, which would raise their total square footage to over 8 million.

See the article at the top of the page for a comprehensive update on their massive campus.

[catch22]

Geez.

[Zuplar]

Is this going to be off SW29th? It seems as though they are building everywhere over there.

[ChrisHayes]

I went for a drive to Mustang a few days ago and saw where they are moving large amounts of dirt on the south side of 29th street. I'm guessing that's for the warehouse

[mugofbeer]

Isnt this getting so large it is going to start affecting the tilt of the earth? 

[Pete]

Yes, the new $88 million warehouse is on the south side of SW 29th, labeled as the "Moore Tract" in the article at the top of the page.

[Urbanized]

It's crazy; that complex is roughly the size of ALL of downtown.

[bombermwc]

I wonder why they didn't just buy up the old Firestone plant It had a lower roof compared to the new structures, but it also had a LOT of space. They had been using some of it that was relabeled Will Rogers, but there is still a LOT not being touched.

The best thing about this is that you don't often hear about disgruntled employees of HL, corporately or otherwise. I'm sure there are some out there, but they seem to treat their employees like people. That's not always the case (take other locals like Paycom for example).

I can definitely appreciate the no barcode approach too. One of my teenage jobs was at K-Mart. Ordering was a complete joke since the employees in each department ordered via our handhelds, but we had no way to see if someone else had already ordered (the "pending orders" was always wrong), there was always a 2 week delay in getting ANYTHING, often codes weren't in the system, inventory was wrong, etc...just wrong on all sides. If you don't have a barcode system to track what you THINK is in the store, it forces the employee to go look on their own to see what is ACTUALLY there. It may take a little longer and a little more effort, but it also means the employees REALLY KNOW their store and their inventory. Those folks always know exactly where something is. It's especially amazing that they do it this way because of the nature of the small individual pieces they have. Barcoding would be the easy way to go. Keep in mind that most of their products come with a UPC code already on it, but they just price-gun right over that bad boy. The other side of that is that they can save a TON on the backoffice computer system that would maintain that data as well as the cash register hardware (come on, have you ever looked at how simple those things were until the last few years).

[Zuplar]

Why does the State of OK own the Southwest corner of SW29th and Macarthur?

[mugofbeer]

Is it possibly school land commission land? This reserves land for future schools, if needed, and goes back nearly to statehood.

[Zuplar]

I don't know, I do know that's Western Heights district and they have several schools one mile over.

[Snowman]

I wonder why they didn't just buy up the old Firestone plant It had a lower roof compared to the new structures, but it also had a LOT of space. They had been using some of it that was relabeled Will Rogers, but there is still a LOT not being touched.

The old Firestone plant was bought by the producers cooperative oil mill, which was into the process of getting all the permits to allow operations there, they started a couple years back but were expecting it to take at least five years.

[Snowman]

Is it possibly school land commission land? This reserves land for future schools, if needed, and goes back nearly to statehood.

land schools were build on at the time of statehood was tiny, most were closer to a city block or smaller (the school building my grandmother went was the size of a suburban house at the corner of the intersection of two county roads), unless they were planning a college to go there

[mugofbeer]

What I'm referring to is that the school land commission owns designated Sections within designated townships in the western half of the state. Some have been sold but the state leases a lot of them and gets mineral royaties from a lot.