Williams-Sonoma

Summary

Williams-Sonoma, Inc. operates as an omni-channel specialty retailer of various products for home. It offers cooking, dining, and entertaining products, such as cookware, tools, electrics, cutlery, tabletop and bar, outdoor, furniture, and a library of cookbooks under the Williams Sonoma Home brand, as well as home furnishings and decorative accessories under the Williams Sonoma lifestyle brand; and furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs, table essentials, and decorative accessories under the Pottery Barn brand. The company also provides home decor products under the West Elm brand; kids accessories under the Pottery Barn Kids brand; and an organic bedding to multi-purpose furniture under the Pottery Barn Teen brand. In addition, it offers made-to-order lighting, hardware, furniture, and home decors inspired by history under the Rejuvenation brand; and women's and men's accessories, travel, entertaining and bar, home décor, and seasonal items under the Mark and Graham brand, as well as operates a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and décor industry. The company markets its products through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs, and retail stores. It operates 544 stores comprising 502 stores in 41states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; 20 stores in Canada; 19 stores in Australia; 3 stores in the United Kingdom; and 139 franchised stores, as well as e-commerce websites in various countries in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, and India. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

History

Williams-Sonoma, Inc. had its initial public offering in July 1983. One million shares were offered on the OTC Market at $23 a share. At the end of 1985, the company was generating over $51 million in sales. In September 1986, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. acquired Pottery Barn from Gap. The acquisition included Pottery Barn's 27 housewares stores located in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York for $6 million. The company's expansion led to the opening of its first distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1984. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was one of the largest proprietary distributors in the Memphis area with 3.5 million square feet of distribution space.From 1986 to 1989, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. grew by an average of 12 stores per year, bringing the total locations to over 100 stores in the U.S. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange starting in 1998, while sales reached $1 billion for the first time.The following year, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. launched its e-commerce websites. The company also launched Pottery Barn Kids, a spin-off of Pottery Barn that specializes in home furnishings for children.The Pottery Barn brand further expanded with the launch of PBteen in early 2003. Pottery Barn extended its merchandising with the introduction of the Pottery Barn Bed & Bath and Pottery Barn Kids in Manhattan.By 2009, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was operating 610 stores with an annual revenue of over $3 billion. In May 2010, Lester retired, and Laura Alber was named CEO of the umbrella organization. Alber joined the company in 1995. She was active in building the Pottery Barn catalog and the development and launch of Pottery Barn Kids and PBteen. In November 2011, the company acquired Portland, Oregon-based Rejuvenation, a manufacturer and direct marketer of light fixtures and hardware with stores in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The company launched a lifestyle brand offering personalized products, Mark and Graham, in November 2012.Williams Sonoma's e-commerce sales were approximately 52 percent of its parent company's revenue of the first quarter of 2015.The West Elm brand was launched in 2002 with the release of a catalog; the following year, the brand opened its first store. Through the West Elm brand, the company launched West Elm Hotels. The joint venture with DDK hospitality management and development company has locations in Detroit, Michigan, Indianapolis, Indiana, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oakland, California and Savannah, Georgia.

The West Elm brand is active with the Clinton Global Initiative and in 2013 agreed to invest $35 million on hand made goods from U.S. and abroad to sell in its stores over the course of two years. The collaborations were aimed to positively impact over 4,000 artisan workers. Former President Bill Clinton visited a West Elm showroom after the company spent nearly that amount in the first year of the agreement. In 2015, the company made a pledge at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting to expand its Fair Trade Certified product offerings.

Vision

Our Vision Is To Enhance The Quality Of Our Customers' Lives At Home. We Put The Customer At The Center Of Everything We Do, Every Day, And A Short But Important List Of Corporate Values Guides Our Actions And Decisions.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams-Sonoma,_Inc.

https://in.investing.com/equities/williams-sonoma-inc

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WSM/profile?p=WSM

https://www.comparably.com/companies/williams-sonoma/mission

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/williams-sonoma

https://sec.report/CIK/0000719955

https://companiesmarketcap.com/

https://www.williams-sonomainc.com

Contacts

Follow Us

Williams-Sonoma

Share

Contacts

Follow Us