Name brand: Hobbs Sporting Goods changing owners‭; ‬family name‭, ‬company legacy here to stay

As surnames go, that of Dublin’s Hobbs family – one shared with its long-running local sporting goods business – represents an awful lot. 

The last name has become a first name in Georgia’s athletic equipment and apparel industry, largely for the relationships and trust the company has steadily built with customers over 56 years, and two generations of ownership. 

That brand, symbolizing prestige as much as prosperity, is set to live on with the business, though its longstanding values will be changing hands to a new custodian. 

Hobbs Sporting Goods is joining a new family, through a marriage of sorts finalized earlier this week that will make it part of a larger regional organization. It was acquired Monday by Florida-based BRC Sports LLC, making it a new sister company to former competitor Baker’s Sporting Goods. 

The two dealers, now teammates, join a sprawling roster of businesses focused on athletic products that are led by Jacksonville entrepreneur Josh Baker. 

The move, effectively more of a merger than a sale, will see owners Frank Hobbs and Chuck Ross stay on with the company in key leadership roles, and few major structural changes to the business in the near-term. But the deal will mark the end to an era of local ownership going back to 1968, when family patriarch William “Billy” Hobbs founded the company, and began making its name. 

“We’ve represented it well, I think,” Frank Hobbs said. “It can be a little bit emotional, because it’s my father’s legacy. Anybody who has been in Dublin and Laurens County, they know Hobbs, for the most part.” 

Teaming up, in a step described by both sets of executives as a “win/win,” projects to increase the power and footprint of the combined company’s sporting goods sales arm, which now strengthens its foothold in Georgia, and pave the way for “exponential growth.” 

“The Hobbs name has always stood for high quality and customer service,” Baker said in a release. “Our plan is to expand the product offerings and capabilities while keeping customer service our No. 1 priority.” 

The pair of companies differ in their location and market size, though both share similar family roots and a nearly identical business model. 

Baker, 45, is a first-generation owner who started out in screen printing, embroidery and sales working solo from his garage as a college student in 1997 (coincidentally the same year Hobbs returned to Dublin to join his father’s business full-time). 

In less than a decade, Baker’s Sporting Goods had expanded to become one of the Southeast’s largest dealers. It currently employs a sales staff of 21, and serves more than 200 clients across four states in the Deep South. 

Baker also founded and owns three separate ventures that manufacture protective football equipment, recondition football helmets and produce stadium netting that are also part of a five-piece portfolio whose name, BRC, represents the names of his three children. 

“He’s got a great story,” Hobbs said. “He started out in the back of his car, moved it to his house and then he just has been very much a visionary.” 

The separate owners had gotten to know each other as both allies – fellow members of the same wholesale buyer’s group, SportsInc. – and also rivals, increasingly so in recent years as Baker’s sales territory began to encroach into the same South Georgia realms worked by Hobbs representatives. 

As time went by, conversations about the long-term future of the company were becoming more and more frequent, with both its leading couples knocking on the door of retirement age. 

Baker, along the way, had made known his interest in acquiring it. 

“He approached us about two years ago, and asked us if we were ever interested in selling to let him know,” Hobbs said. “To his credit, he continued pursuing us. And through the last year or so, we’ve really started considering it.” 

The road of opportunity, one of many that were in front of them, was the one that seemed best, as was this timing. 

“When I was thinking and meditating and praying on all this, I wanted to make sure that it was a win for our people, and I’m talking about our salespeople and our support staff, and I wanted it to be a win for Josh, but it was important that it was a win for our family, also,” Hobbs said. 

Hobbs Sporting Goods came into existence when Billy – a former local athlete and coach, notably leader of the first two football teams in East Laurens history – bought out Bob Holmes, the owner of Dublin Sporting Goods, in 1968 and set up his own store at the present-day Jackson Square downtown. 

The business, by the 1970s, migrated along with most of the rest of downtown to the newly constructed Dublin Mall. A transition to Hobbs’ current location on U.S. 80 – adding a storefront to its existing warehouse – followed in the early 90s. 

Multiple members of the Hobbs clan worked various jobs in the family business going back to the beginning, though Frank (and wife Lyn) and Ellen Ross (whose husband Chuck became co-owner and CFO) were the two out of four siblings who returned to take an ownership stake.  

Billy, who fully handed things off to his kids in 1999, would remain with the business in a part-time capacity until his death in 2005. 

“Our father left us in really good shape, so we’ve been able to be good stewards of the business that he left with us,” Hobbs said. 

The company, together with the sporting goods industry as a whole, has evolved over time from beginnings in a retail-dominated world to its present-day format overwhelmingly focused on direct-to-team sales, with the rise of big-box retailers like Walmart around the ’80s as a major pivot point. 

David Scott, who remains part of the staff in semi-retirement, was one of Hobbs’ first outside salesmen. The company now employs 10 who serve different regions of the state, or specialize in a specific sport or product line. 

In total, the current staff numbers in the neighborhood of 25, between traveling reps and others holding down operations out of home base in Dublin, and a second store opened more recently in Gainesville. 

It’s weathered the storm of many economic shifts and downturns, including the COVID-19 pandemic

“One of the proudest things (for) Chuck and I was being able to survive the pandemic,” Hobbs said. “We were able to bring back everybody, and we not only survived, but really, since the pandemic, we’ve thrived.” 

Looking back on the success that both predated and followed their time in charge, it’s hard not to be grateful, especially considering that three full families (totaling eight kids) between the two generations of owners – plus those of employees – have been provided for as a result. 

“This business has been good to us, really good to us,” Hobbs said. “By no means are we rich, but we had a good living, and we’ve met a lot of good people along the way.” 

And despite the changing ownership, each of the Hobbs will remain part of the business in their various capacities for as long into the future as they want to continue working. 

“We’re going to work here until it’s time,” Hobbs said. “And I can’t exactly tell you (when that will be), but we’re all in in building the Baker-Hobbs brand.” 

The new company’s logo, in fact, will feature both emblems side-by-side for the foreseeable future. Rather than combining the two into one, Baker insisted that the Hobbs name be preserved. 

“And I appreciate that,” Hobbs said. “Eventually, I know that’s going to be gone. But right now, while we’re still involved, they want us to have that. I think all of our Baker family members are savvy enough to know it’s important to have it on there, but they didn’t have to do that, and I appreciate that. Josh has been really sensitive to me in the name part of it, ’cause he gets it.” 

What does that name stand for? 

Hobbs hopes that it’s not so much racks of baseball gloves and shoes or deals on T-shirts and football pants as it is the kindness and fairness with which they’ve worked to treat customers. 

Through the years, he’s tried to live and work by the motto of Proverbs 15:1… “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” 

“We’ve tried to do it right, and that’s a prayer that I’ve always prayed: Lord, help us to do it right,” he said. “Why do you want to do it right? I know if we do it right that there will be blessings, I know that. But I don’t want to do that to necessarily get the blessings. I want to do it right because it’s the right thing to do. 

“I think we’ve tried to do it right. Obviously along the way, we’ve made mistakes. But we’ve always tried to right the mistakes. The Hobbs name, we’ve always tried to do the right thing, and we’ve worked really hard.” 

A big reason behind the decision to sell the company to Baker? His company and family holds those values just as dear, and promises to carry them forward.  

“We’re yoked in a lot of ways, and that’s one of them,” Hobbs added. “Relationships are big. You establish a relationship and maintain a relationship, and try to treat people right and be honest with them.”