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The day Carolyn Paul figured it out, she determined that 22 competing companies had come and gone in the years she’d owned and operated Hobrecht Lighting Design & Decor.

“They always come in with the idea they’re going to put me out of business, but they don’t know me,” says Carolyn, who is 92, has owned her business since 1972 and remains actively involved and mentally sharp. “Because once you know that I’m zigging, all of a sudden I’m zagging.”

There’s an exception to the trend of failed local competitors, though: Lofings Lighting, a J Street store owned by the family of the late C.L., or Roy Lofing, who used to work for Hobrecht. 

At a time when anyone can order lighting fixtures off Amazon or wander the aisles of Home Depot or Lowe’s and select something readily available and cheap, visiting Hobrecht or Lofings can feel like a trip to a different era. Still, there’s a story worth telling connected to each of these Sacramento stores which shows how family businesses can endure even in changing times.

Fixtures for the Alhambra

It’s the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, and the energy drink Eric Paul, 57, consumed shortly before a Comstock’s reporter made an unannounced visit to Hobrecht’s Auburn Boulevard showroom is coursing through his veins. Eric has dropped what he was doing to spend a half hour enthusiastically recounting the story of the business that his mother Carolyn owns and that he has managed for the past 24 years.

Now, Eric is rummaging through drawers in what was once his father Stan Paul’s office, looking for a vital piece of both Sacramento and company history. 

Stan, who died in August 2020 at 93, was never hugely involved in the business he and Carolyn, his wife, technically purchased together; Stan had learned to build houses. But Carolyn, who had previously worked in a dental office, was well-prepared to own and operate a lighting store, with a keen and unapologetic approach to business.
“I believe in the fact that everybody should get what they pay for, but they should pay for everything they get,” Carolyn says.

Nevertheless, Stan kept a corner office at the showroom, one that feels like a time warp with binders of business material from the 1990s, old photos scattered about and, after Eric looks in a few places, some priceless drawings of old lighting fixtures from the historic and long-demolished Alhambra Theatre.

Eric brings the drawings out of the darkened office and into the light of the showroom, slowly unfolding them. The tattered paper and ornate designs coupled with the Alhambra’s 1927 opening suggest these drawings might be close to a century old, long before Eric’s family got involved with Hobrecht. The drawings of lighting Hobrecht created for the Alhambra are a testament, though, to the store’s long place in the Sacramento region, dating to its 1909 founding by brothers Philip J. Hobrecht and Joseph C. Hobrecht.

There are other connections to Sacramento history for Hobrecht as well, such as its unlikely role in helping pioneer local radio. “They actually bought the very first radio station here in Sacramento,” Eric says. Joseph Hobrecht made his purchase, which was in late 1921 according to a contemporary source, as a way to advertise his store. The radio venture didn’t last long, and the store soon sold its 5-watt transmitter to KFBK, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.

For many years, Hobrecht operated at 2311 J Street, where a Fleet Feet shoe store is now located. In time, Roy Lofing began to work there. “He started out there sweeping the floors and all that kind of good stuff,” says his son Don Lofing, 81. In 1961, Roy, with the help of his wife and son, opened his own business at 2121 J St.

It was initially a TV repair shop. “It took us about three or four years to be able to get our first lamp or something in the window,” Don says. In time, though, Lofings found greater success, becoming the first distributor for Lutron lighting equipment in the Sacramento Valley.

What Lofings and Hobrecht are today

It’s safe to say that stores like Hobrecht and Lofings aren’t Home Depot or Lowe’s in any way, shape or form. Some of it is the caliber of merchandise that can sit on the floor of a small specialty store that isn’t dependent on volume. “I can put, like, a $10,000 light fixture on the floor, and I can let that sit for a year because I brought that in because I think it’s cool,” Eric Paul says.

Some of the difference, though, which is embraced by both stores, is also about service. Don Lofing likens the folly of a large box store to bringing a wagon full of goods and expecting people to just come and pick things off the shelf. “What helps us to be above the rest is we’re able to offer a service they can’t get at those places,” Don says.

Same thing goes at Hobrecht, where staff is trained to act as a personal shopper for customers and where alterations to lighting fixtures are handled, rather than sent out. “Like Lowe’s and Home Depot’s not doing — they’re not gonna paint the fixture, they’re not gonna rewire the fixture, they’re not gonna make it longer, shorter,” Eric says. “We do a lot of crazy stuff here to make it work for the client.”

Max Lofing, 49, who is Don’s son and co-owns the business with him and his sister Wendy Lofing-Rossotti, 57, knows the value of service, too, and how it’s kept his business secure while so many others have gone by the wayside.

“When you have your up cycles, people can kind of get away with not getting the job all the way done and still get business to come in the door,” Max says. “But in down cycles, the people that are the proven ones that get the job done are the ones that continue to get business.”

Wendy says it takes something special to stay in business. “I think a lot of it is the family’s commitment to running it, because it is a ton of work.”

Trained as a mechanical engineer at UC Davis, Max enjoys the problem-solving elements of his work. “There’s always some different challenge of the geometry of the room, the desires of the customer,” he says. 

It hasn’t always been easy to keep the doors open. During the Great Recession of 2008, Eric says he went from a staff of around 35 people to roughly eight in 60 days. Asked what got Hobrecht through this period, he replies, “Carolyn, there was no question,” noting his mom’s ability to renegotiate payment terms with vendors.

Some of what’s gotten these businesses through the tough times, perhaps, has also been one another. “I believe the reason that we two have stayed in business is we’re fair competition,” Carolyn says.

Max Lofing doesn’t mind the competition, either.

“I think it’s a good, friendly competition, and it’s been that way for years,” he says. “I think we both have our places in the market.”   

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