David Green insists God is the true owner of his $3 billion arts and crafts chain. Acting as His disciple, Green has become the largest evangelical benefactor in the world?with plans for unprecedented gifts once he?s in heaven.
Fresh off an inspection of Hobby Lobby?s sprawling 5.5 million-square-foot distribution warehouse in Oklahoma City, the company?s CEO, David Green, retreats to his office in the adjacent executive building, where he surrounds himself with a collection of homely elephant figurines. His coffee table is draped with a bird?s-eye-view photograph of his corporate campus, annotated with scribbles in black marker that show the expansion under way.
Credit: Jamie Lipke for Forbes
When I ask him to walk me through the secrets to his company?s growth, which the aerial plans represent, the 70-year-old, with a full head of white hair, blue eyes and a prominent square jaw, doesn?t take any personal credit. Nor does he laud his executives or his 22,000 employees or his customers, who will gobble up more than $3 billion worth of crafts products from him this year. ?If you have anything or if I have anything, it?s because it?s been given to us by our Creator,? says Green, sweeping his hand over the acres laid out before him. ?So I have learned to say, ?Look, this is yours, God. It?s all yours. I?m going to give it to you.? ?
He means that literally. David Green has one of America?s great, little-known fortunes, having turned a makeshift manufacturing operation in his living room for arts and crafts into a retail monster, with 520 superstores in 42 states. Green and his family own 100% of the company and he ranks No. 79 on our list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion. Hobby Lobby?s cash spigot currently makes him the largest individual donor to evangelical causes in America.
?I don?t care if you?re in business or out of business, God owns it,? says Green. ?How do I separate it? Well, it?s God?s in church and it?s mine here? I have purpose in church, but I don?t have purpose over here? You can?t have a belief system on Sunday and not live it the other six days.?
Abroad, Green is putting Scripture into the hands of nonbelievers. ?People ask, ?How are you going to get a Bible to everyone in the world?? We?re doing it,? Green says. Through foundations he supports, he has already distributed nearly 1.4 billion copies of Gospel literature in more than 100 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia. The OneHope Foundation targets children age 4 to 14 with Scripture tailored to them, while Every Home for Christ sends evangelists with Bible booklets door-to-door in some of the poorest countries on Earth. ?It?s not like you give them that but don?t give them food; you do both,? Green stresses. But the priority is clear: ?If I die without food or without eternal salvation, I want to die without food.?
Green and his family show what giving looks like ?from a biblical perspective,? says Rob Hoskins, president of OneHope. ?For high-net-worth individuals, particularly people that created first-generation wealth, to look at the growth of their business, not for them to maintain a lavish lifestyle or accumulate generational wealth but for the cause of Christ?they?re a shining light in the Christian community.?
Who is responsible for Hobby Lobby?s success depends on who tells the story. CFO Jon Cargill, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, calls Green ?the Bobby Fischer of merchandising.? It doesn?t take more than a few minutes with the founder, walking through a local Hobby Lobby store, to see the reason he has been able to expand his company into a well-oiled, moneymaking machine without bringing in any outside investors.
Stopping at a display marked 30% off, Green explains how a kitschy rooster ornament is produced overseas for pennies on the dollar, then sold as part of an in-house brand of home accents: the ceramic vases, bookend statuettes and decorative mirrors that dominate prime center-store real estate and make up Hobby Lobby?s highest-grossing department. The rooster doesn?t have a common bar code under its tail feathers; Green is winning a war against computerized point of sale systems, with the belief that manually updating the price sticker makes his employees more knowledgeable.
Adhering to that stubborn dogma has helped Green, who continues to work six days a week, take Hobby Lobby to greater heights. Same-store sales have increased by an average of 8.1% over each of the last four years, while larger competitor Michaels averaged only 0.4% during the same period. ?It?s just a fantastic, unbelievable retail experience that I can?t get enough of,? says Sue Turchick, president of Crafters Home, a buying group for independent arts and crafts retailers. ?I tend to want to buy independent, locally owned and operated, but Hobby Lobby steals me away from that principle every stinking time.?
Hobby Lobby remains a Christian company in every sense. It runs ads on Christmas and Easter in the local paper of each town where there?s a store, often asserting the religious foundation of America. Stores are closed on Sundays, forgoing revenue to give employees time to worship. The company keeps four chaplains on the payroll and offers a free health clinic for staff at the headquarters?although not for everything; it?s suing the federal government to stop the mandate to cover emergency contraception through health insurance. Green has raised the minimum wage for full-time employees a dollar each year since 2009?bringing it up to $13 an hour?and doesn?t expect to slow down. From his perspective, it?s only natural: ? God tells us to go forth into the world and teach the Gospel to every creature. He doesn?t say skim from your employees to do that.?
While the transition from a generational trust was difficult, Green is concerned only with behaving according to what the Bible tells him. Hobby Lobby, he knows, won?t last forever. ?Woolworth?s is gone. Sears is almost gone. TG&Y is gone. So what? This is worth billions of dollars. So what? Is that the end of life, making more money and building something?? Green asks, answer already in hand. ?For me, I want to know that I have affected people for eternity. I believe I am. I believe once someone knows Christ as their personal savior, I?ve affected eternity. I matter 10 billion years from now. I matter. Someone that does all this doesn?t matter. I?m sorry, it?s gone.?
It?s that absolute conviction that drives him every day. Whether God is really watching over him and his stores, Green?s certainty in his Savior?s existence has gotten him this far. Why waver now?
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Source: http://www.cfcbe.com/2012/10/10/david-green-the-biblical-billionaire/
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