Williams-Sonoma

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Fortune 500

Industries included in the sector are automotive retail, general merchandisers, internet retail, and specialty retail.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Retailing

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-435-Williams-Sonoma

The publicly traded consumer retail company sells kitchenware and home furnishings in more than 600 brick-and-mortar stores. It also successfully pivoted to ecommerce during the worst of 2020's pandemic lockdowns, which helped it grow revenue by 15% year-over-year; Williams-Sonoma climbed 64 spots on this year's list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-486-Williams-Sonoma

This speciality retailer sells products for the home through brands including Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.

As we face unprecedented collective challenges, cooperation has become a business superpower.

25.CTW20.Williams-Sonoma

This furniture and housewares chain closed all 600-plus stores as the pandemic surged this spring. But unlike most of its retail peers, Williams-Sonoma paid staff for the duration of the store closures, and eschewed furloughs. The decision didn’t blunt its momentum: Williams-Sonoma recorded near-record profits in its most recent quarter, helped in part by store veterans who pivoted to e-commerce roles.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Specialty retailer Williams-Sonoma sells cooking, dining, and home products from kitchenware to furniture to home decor. Founded in 1956, the company now includes its namesake brand, Williams Sonoma, but its largest is Pottery Barn. It also runs West Elm, Pottery Barn Kids, and Pottery Barn Teen.

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Williams-Sonoma (WSM): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Williams-Sonoma | Fortune

Williams-Sonoma (WSM): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Wayfair thrived during the pandemic, scaling to over 30 million products and rising to #217 on the Fortune 500. But after a post-COVID slump, it’s rethinking its strategy. In 2024, the company opened its first large-format retail store and rolled out new AI tools to reimagine how people shop for their homes. Here’s how Wayfair is betting on technology and in-person retail to power its next chapter in a crowded home-goods market.


How Wayfair’s Betting on AI to Future Proof its $12B Empire 

Wayfair is betting big on AI and physical retail to reconnect with shopper

Tech

Wayfair thrived during the pandemic, scaling to over 30 million products and rising to #217 on the Fortune 500. But after a post-COVID slump, it’s rethinking its strategy

How Wayfair Built a $12 Billion Home Retail Empire 

Wayfair built its multi-billion dollar business by selling home goods online, eventually scaling to more than 30 million products. Today, it's the largest online home goods retailer in the United States, but after a pandemic boom in sales, growth slumped, and so did the company's stock price. Now Wayfair is pivoting. In 2024, it stepped into physical retail with its first large format store. At the same time, it's betting on AI to streamline operations and reimagine how shoppers discover furniture. So we've been using the sort of text to image generation capability to generate an AI to be able to showcase a whole bunch of different images that our customers can then react to and say, oh, I like this. Here's how Wayfair built a $12 billion home goods empire. And how it's using AI and big box retail to fuel its next chapter. Founded in 2002 as a network of niche furniture sites, Wayfair evolved into a sprawling online marketplace. It now offers over 30 million products from around 20,000 suppliers. It also runs a lineup of lifestyle and luxury brands. The main basic difference between Wayfair and some of its other home furnishing competitors is that it is a marketplace platform, so they don't own any of their inventory. Everything is just forward position. on their site so that consumers can use it from the many vendors that they work with. Unlike many of its competitors, Wayfair doesn't manufacture or own its inventory. Instead, it connects shoppers with third party suppliers. This dropship business model allowed Wayfair to scale quickly, offering an enormous product catalog while keeping fixed costs low. Having these relationships with some of these smaller vendors is really unique in that it's a More visible way for the vendors to reach a much broader total addressable market. It helps elevate the business of small vendors while it also helps provide more choices to consumers for Wayfair. During the pandemic, that model helped the company thrive. Sales surged by 45% in 2020 as consumers redecorated during lockdowns. The next year, Wayfair shot up the Fortune 500 rankings, climbing more than 100. 30 spots to land at number 217. When we look back at COVID, that clearly accelerated e-commerce adoption across a number of categories, things like grocery and furniture. We saw the share price really rise to around $350 a share, but post-pandemic demand cooled as interest rates climbed and inflation pinched household budgets. Spending on big ticket furniture slowed. Wayfair's stock lost over 80% of its. between 2021 and early 2023, investors realized things are going to reopen. People are traveling. They're eating at restaurants again, and it wasn't idiosyncratic to Wayfair. It was across the industry, right? All of the peers really saw that phenomenon. Major home retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond filed for bankruptcy in 2023, shuttering hundreds of stores around the country. Despite declining sales post pandemic, Wayfair was. A to weather the market volatility. You know, if you look at somebody like Bed Bath and Beyond, there were liquidity issues. Interestingly, despite the fact that really Wayfair isn't generating a whole lot of profitability, the way that the capital structure works is that they don't really need that same sort of liquidity. But as the online home retail market has become more crowded, Wayfair is looking for ways to improve its e-commerce model and its customer experience. So we've been applying AI for quite some time, probably over a decade. The more recent advancements are allowing us to take that to yet another level. Fiona Tan is Wayfair's chief technology officer. Over the last few years, she has helped lead the company's investments in AI. It's a category where it's hard for our customers sometimes to describe what they're looking for. And then sometimes they don't really even know what they're looking for, so we've been using the sort of text to image generation capability to generate a AI to be able to showcase, you know, a whole bunch of different images that our customers can then react to and say, oh, I like this. I didn't know, I don't know what it's called, but it speaks to me. In 2025, Wayfair debuted a generative AI platform called Muse. The tool allows shoppers to curate AI generated home designs in certain styles. From there, the platform will recommend Wayfair products that fit the look. And then you can even tailor it a little bit more and just say, OK, well I like this, but I prefer green chairs instead of beige, and as you interact with muse, it'll generate you another image based on what you're saying. As the customers are inspired and engaged more with us, we're able to discern better what the intent and what their style preferences are, maybe what the budget preferences are, and then it allows us. And then recommend products for them. Waver says that level of personalization may help reduce return rates by giving customers more confidence in their purchases because the customers are more confident of the products that they buy or they've been able to get more information about it, ideally what you also see is there are fewer returns, right, because you're able to help them make um more. Informed decisions. Behind the scenes, Wayfair's legal, HR, and finance teams are also using AI to process data faster and streamline operations. For example, our legal teams using it to be able to look at, you know, user reviews to look for items that may have caused any kind of injury, and then you'll have examples in the technology department. Our accounting and finance team is also leveraging it. So it's really across the enterprise. While AI is helping to streamline Wayfair's digital operations, the company is also testing a more traditional strategy opening physical stores. In May 2024, Wayfair opened its first large format retail store in Wilma, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. The 150,000. A square foot store features showrooms, interior design services, and a cafe. Instead of spending marketing dollars on digital spend, you're spending your marketing dollars on physical spend. While competitors like William Sonoma benefit from built-in visibility through their retail locations, Wayfair has had to rely more heavily on advertising. every, every home. In 2024, they spent about 12% of their net revenue on advertising, while competitors like William Sonoma spent about 7% and Restoration Hardware only spent 4%. Wayfair leans into advertising a little bit more because it's hard to remain visible when you're an e-commerce only retailer, right? And so, You know, reminding consumers that you exist isn't free. Wayfair's new store location sits strategically along a major commuter highway. Since the opening of the store, Wayfair says sales in Illinois have jumped around 15%. Based on early results, Wayfair plans to open two more large format stores, one in Atlanta, Georgia and another in Yonkers, New York. Still, when it comes to home goods, Wayfair operates in a competitive and fragmented landscape. While the company holds the top spot for largest online home goods retailer in the US, it's only by a small margin, very fragmented, very hard to have a competitive advantage. We think Wayfair is one of a number of competitors that are really struggling. To avoid discounting and reinvent themselves in different ways to remain relevant to consumers. Big box retailers like Walmart, Target, and IKEA all sell home goods with the added advantage of physical stores, tight logistics, and brand familiarity. Other high-end home goods companies like RH and Pottery Barn offer in-person shopping that build a more luxury customer experience. It's a lot easier to be top of mind when you are a pottery barn in a mall or a RH that has a freestanding store and a restaurant, and it's an experience, but we. moves into brick and mortar stores and AI are helping to close that gap. So one of the capabilities again of AI and also generative AI is our ability to understand, have a deeper understanding of the products that we sell, discerning the color, the size, dimensions. Some of it's in the product details, sometimes there may be errors and it can also augment and enrich the information. That we get from our suppliers, so we're doing a lot in the customer experience. I do think AI will help young people sort of get their head around how they want to plan their smaller spaces, but also, you know, the accessible price points that is that Wayfair offers also helps bring those consumers in, and I think that a lot of that is their their main consumer.

Yasir Anwar, Chief Technology and  Digital Officer, Williams-Sonoma Inc. Sravana Karnati,  Senior Vice President and CTO, Walmart International, Walmart Moderator: Verne Kopytoff, Senior Editor, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Brainstorm AI

Brainstorm AI 2023: Shopping for New Uses of AI in Retail

Conferences

Yasir Anwar, Chief Technology and  Digital Officer, Williams-Sonoma Inc. Sravana Karnati,  Senior Vice President and CTO, Walmart International, Walmart, Verne Kopytoff, Senior Editor, FORTUNE

Hello, everyone. And thank you, Yasser and Shabana for joining us. Good to be here. Thank you. And a reminder towards the end of our talk, we'll be taking questions from the audience. So please think up some good ones uh for our pan to start with. Uh Could you set the scene for, for the audience with a couple of examples? Your favorite examples of A I you're using at your company. We start with you, Mr Yeah, thanks. Um Yeah, I I represent Walmart. I work for Walmart International and the CTO for Walmart International. Um You know, we have uh you know A I is, is behind everything that we do. We've been using A I for a very long time including the transformer model that is core of chat GP T. Um You know, a couple of really good examples I can, I can highlight for this holiday season or in the way we are improving. Search for our customers. You can today, you can natural language type in the search box and um the the tool automatically understands the query and gives you the most appropriate search results. That's one example and the other one I can give you is in the way we are predicting demand at what granularity we are doing that and how we are disposition the demand, the inventory in our network across the supply chain. Those are two examples. Yeah, for us and for me specifically, it's about moving the right needle for the business. So besides doing a lot of R and D, we want to deploy A I to move the real business business outcomes. So two examples, recent ones were what is a personalized recommendation and personalization engine we built in house leveraging A I and uh parts of gen A I. And it has allowed us to generate a tremendous amount of uh incremental revenue and conversion lift, which has made a big dent in the in the in the digital revenue. At the same time, we also use personal uh we do a lot of personalization products in our brand like Mark and Gram. So monogramming and stuff, we get returns, we used to get returns and it's difficult sometimes to find the accurate cause of those returns because either there's a thread or there is a location of the monogram or A or or uh the machines that are using that. So we leveraged an A A I based solution, we built it, which is image based and we pass our returns to that solution and it accurately identifies what could have been the cause why a customer returned a particular product that helps us in closing the loop with our production manufacturing and tells us this has been a very good, very recent um exploration and deployment of A I in our company. And there are many more examples. Well, you may have heard it's we're in the busy holiday shopping season. Um When do you start preparing for that? And do you do anything special? Simply because it's the holiday season in terms of A I I go first. So in terms of the way I, so first of all, I would say at Walmart, we have every day is a holiday type of uh you know, operation. So uh we are super focused on our customer all through the year. Uh But we all know, so the holidays uh time frame is a very special one. We are sitting on a lot of inventory. We are, we are, we are bringing in a lot of inventory from overseas and, and domestic channels as well. Uh So being able to, you know, accurately predict the demand and uh and uh store to store the inventory at the right place at the right time is, is, is the most important thing we can do. And then really, you know, scaling our systems is another one that we do. Um You mentioned A IA I, like I said is in everything that we do. One of the things that we do in our infrastructure is enamel detection, you know, whether it is for fraud fraud detection or anomalous behavior in the infrastructure to see if workloads are not behaving the way they are supposed to behave and they need to be shifted around. So that's another example where we use ea I are, there are many such examples and you also holidays anything. Yeah, I think for the A I, it's also important to understand that A I is, you know, we talk about governance and it could also go rogue. It could also build biases over the period of time. So holiday when you are, you know, 40 30% of retailers, business happens in the Q four. It's important to kind of revisit your business rules, revisit your testing strategy on A I itself and make sure it's not going into other directions. So that's a general A I governance that is we focus on for preparation of holidays due to high volumes, prepare better data for it for its training of the MO models. And uh one other example from a functional perspective is uh you know, the promised date for the customers and finding the optimal path and supply chain to get the goods delivered to their homes. So we also leverage it there and with holiday with the different uh you know, allocation of the inventories in different locations and the and the holiday products. Um it has a major role to play to make sure we are serving to the customers in the most accurate manner and in terms of uh demand forecasting? What kind of data goes into that? Are you using like weather? And is there any kind of strange data you're pouring in there? Yeah. So obviously, you know, one of the things we did was to look at our like, like uh you know, most people look at past demand and then predict, you know, future demand. Uh But we found that over time, we need to incorporate all other signals as well, whether it is uh you know, weather data, social media channel, uh you know what people are searching on our site. Um And whatever else we are, we are seeing in, in, in the, in the market, in social media and other channels, incorporating all of that and being able to uh predict demand at a Q level by store level as well. So we've been able to apply the uh you know, deep neural network strategies to predict demand. And we, we, we did a I before I would say in this year, uh the, the fidelity of the data and the fidelity of the res results that we're seeing is much, much better compared to what we've seen in the past. So I think kind of the answer is kind of same and common because I think the dimensions of data are increasing day by day. So even if you have the models that we're running, you need to fit it more dimensional data. One you were talking about season one, it could be weather, it could be the supply chain answers that have been evolving from last year to now, things have changed. The cost of uh supply chain has changed, it has changed the dynamics of things making available. Your stored locations. Are there the events that are happening? So you try to tap into as many data insights you can bring in to be able to do better forecasting. Um Now, now yo your your supply chain is particularly uh so challenging because you do a lot of custom products. Uh you order a couch with 100 different options. There's no couch sitting in a warehouse with those options available. How how does that make uh sort of predicting delivery? Uh How do you go about predicting delivery under those circumstances? Well, I think um you know, a delivery from a order from a click all the way up to the uh houses the customer requires uh goes through multiple segments. One of them, as you mentioned is manufacturing. So we can talk about all of the segments, but we look at the different segments of our supply chain. But in this case to your specific to your question, we look at the within the four walls, productivity of that particular plant or a unit. Understand based on the volumes that are coming in uh what has been the historical production and what they can predict based on the raw materials that are available there. And that becomes a good data point into calculation of the delivery points for those uh custom products. And how about you? Uh Servan, you're not creating necessarily custom products, but you do have millions of products. Yeah, we have millions of products and you know, several notes in our supply chain, whether it is distribution centers or D CS or stores and every one of these things we call that is a node you could ship from either to the uh to the customer or if it's a DC to a store or directly to the customer as well. Um So one of the things we we look at is, you know, what is the optimal location for inventory? Right. So can you delay that as much as possible? So that you can actually have risk pooling and then hold the least amount of material in stock in your, in your network. Uh And then that, that also should consider, you know, your, your catchment areas for a, for a store, uh availability of your drivers, you know, when you're talking about, you know, uh distributing, you know, end products to customers. Uh And all of these supply chain signals are used not only in, in predicting what is the best place, but also what is the most optimal place to put it, right. So I make a distinction between, you know A I strategies um and you know, highly optimal mathematical strategies. So I think, you know, solving supply chain problems really involves blending both. It is not just A I or JA I, but it's also mathematical programming techniques such as operations research and, and so forth and, and the author uh obviously A I has an impact on jobs. Um How is William Sonoma uh thinking about that? Yeah, I think we, I mean, we are very excited about the advent of A I and especially the JN A that is coming and people talk and worry about and scared of losing jobs. I would put a question for ourselves and to everybody that I think I would be personally more worried and scared if in every five years, we don't have a big technology disruption that is coming because that actually brings jobs and it's not me again. We all love data. We are here for data. Data tells us historically, no matter whether it was from uh from horses to cars, to airplanes, to electric vehicles, you name it all the advance of technology came in. People might have been scared back then. But the new ecosystems, these technologies generate, generate millions of jobs. So if the key is about adoption of A I in a sustainable manner for the business outcomes, not just for, you know, shiny object running after that and also safe and secure A I. If you produce that and you scale it, I believe in the next five years, we'll have multi million jobs generated and a new ecosystem that will emerge, that will require jobs. Of course, it will require some training and transforming how we achieve our work and also redefining our priorities where we spend time uh in doing meaningful work. Uh Well, let's see if we have any audience questions out there, we'll have people uh with paddles coming with the microphone to uh we have somebody up here on front here. I am. Uh could you uh give your name and identify your affiliation? Sure. Um John Jessup, I'm CEO of 1440. Uh Yes sir. You guys are a big sales force shop. So I'm curious your thoughts on like how like data cloud like commerce, personalization and then Einstein, it's in the kind of overall shop we have partnership with sales force. I wouldn't necessarily call we are a sales force shop. We leverage some of their great technologies, especially their email marketing program and we build a lot of custom in house solutions and leveraging the open source A I and we continue to evaluate with them whatever they're bringing. I strongly believe that it cannot be just you're doing your own uh little A I and 27 solutions and broken different parts because in few years, if you do not uh integrate with the larger ecosystem, whether it's open A I, whether it's C Force Google uh API S, then uh the work we will do and solutions we will build. After a few years, you have to abandon them because they will not be able to catch up. So key is how do you leverage the ecosystem but also have the expertise in house to build and drive your own destiny versus depending too much on one vendor or a company. Another question over here. Thank you. I'm Sammy from a ARP. Um Could you, as you've, as you've ramped up your use of A I and to maximize your investment in it, Can you talk to us about the kind of roles and jobs that you've increased or you've created in your organization? Yeah. So, you know, uh one of the things we have done is to um educate all of our uh associates around use of gen A I and uh roll out, you know, incremental tools. For example, we rolled out a tool called my assistant that allows our associates to ask questions around their benefits or what have you. Um And so we are in the, in the stage where we are getting our, our, our personnel or associates trained on A I and advanced computation technologies. Uh When it comes to our supply chain, the kinds of work our supply chain uh associates do is quite different now than what they did a few years ago. It is not that, you know, we created new jobs from that, but it is the kinds of things that those personnel do that is quite dramatically changed. And we see this, you know, continuing this trend continuing um with our associates, you know, doing more of creative strategic work and less of mundane sort of manual type work. So anything that can be automated can be obviously automated. So using systems with A I, what we can do is to actually embed some intelligence, you know, in the systems as well. So they can mimic, you know, human like decision process. But when you are solving the problem accurately, as I said, you don't need to sort of emerge it with the mathematical sort of foundation. And many times our associates actually are asking for those solutions. And so we believe in designing the systems and solutions with our associates and with our customers as opposed to for them if you will. Yeah, I think a lot of the thing is about adoption and training and yes, making your, first of all, it starts with the top. So your CEO your board, I think it's very important to bring them along and explain them how you're gonna approach A I, what are the relevant use cases that you go? And then even in the in the building cycle, it's important. The role of a product manager in technology has dramatically changed leveraging A I. So they have to understand to be able to go to the outcomes, the way they are going to define the KPIS are very different. So there is training going on. So new you can transform a role of product managers have emerged. Then of course, you have to have A I engineers, data scientists, more and more of them. So they are attacking the problem in a way. So it has generated newer titles, newer jobs with newer skills, but it also requires the entire supporting ecosystem for them to come to fruition. Yeah, great. Well, I think we're out of time. I'd like to thank my Panelist, Servan and Yasser. Thank you for the uh fascinating chat.

Laura Alber, President and CEO, Williams-Sonoma Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE
Before
THE DISRUPTOR


MPW Summit 2023: Home Sweet Home

Our next guest is the longest 10 yard female Fortune 500 CEO and she's on Fortune's list of the most powerful woman in business. Again this year, William Sonoma president and Ceo Laura Alber has led the company and served on its board of directors since 2010. Laura spearheaded the company's expansion to new markets, has broadened its portfolio of multi channel brands with great success and it's a driving force behind Williams and Noah's technological innovation including its recent A I powered partnership with salesforce designed to deliver a more targeted customer experience. As Laura has said there are no shortcuts to success. It takes years of dedication, hard work, unwavering, consistency and steadfast discipline to achieve goals. She joins Fortune, senior writer and NPW. Coacher. Emma Hinchliff to talk about her rise with the latter, her passion for customers and delivering the perfect home experience. Please welcome them to the MPW stage. Hi, Laura, good morning. Hi. Hi. So thank you for being here. Thanks. So we're in like a crazy macro environment. And what happens to Williams Noma, when people are not buying and selling homes, please have your water first. No rush. I'm gonna just relax, you know, even though we're in a bit of a home recession because the interest rates are really high, people still love their homes. Right. I mean, when you ask people your intention with your home or are you thinking about a second home, there's a lot of dreaming that goes into what will be a sort of, you know, the ultimate American dream. And, you know, obviously life stage changes affect how you live, whether it's moving into an urban location or having Children or, you know, downsizing any of it affects your home. Unfortunately, people are having a hard time moving right now, but that doesn't mean they're not interested and that they don't love their homes. And obviously the pandemic led us all to spend more time. Lots of people learned how to cook because you had to and those same things are still affecting how consumers are purchasing today and what they're interested in. Yeah. So what are consumers willing to spend on right now? You know, it's great to see such buoyant interest in the seasonal holidays? You know, it's, people are together. I remember last year at about this time, you know, Halloween was a bit dampened because COVID came back and the kids, you know, you couldn't feel that great about it and this year everybody's in full force for Halloween. And um, so if, if we see that we think for Christmas, you know, the holidays will be quite good for us. They're also buying, you know, smaller things like bedding decor and we have some dynamite collaborations right now. I don't know if you guys have been in and seen the two C collaboration at William Sonoma. We just did an incredible one with Sheila Bridges. We have a lot of stuff in the Hopper, but that stuff also allows us to bring new populations in that don't know our brands and it's super fun. Yeah. And we should say Williams Sonoma includes West Pottery Bar and lots of other brands besides William Sonoma. Yes. Yes. So, as we heard, you are the longest tenured female CEO in the Fortune 500. 0, yes. You know, I mean, is that a good thing? I don't even know what to think about that. Like, hm. Yeah, that's my question for you. I mean, lots of emotions go through your mind. Like I think a lot of people job hop. A lot of women get fired. A lot of people get fired, right. So I feel like I'm a survivor maybe, I don't know. Like I also have a lot of resilience. So I put up with, you know, things along the way that might have punched people out. It's been totally worth it. I do think I have best job ever. Um, any examples, what have you put up with that? Others might have said, I think, you know, you get like, as you go through the ranks, you get a lot of different bosses. Right. There's a lot of different org structures. It's not all perfect. Um, and if you can't base, I think your future and your tenure on an individual, a single person, whether good or bad. And I've worked for, I went to a company once for someone and they were let go immediately after and that was a really bad mistake because then I was stuck at that company and at the same time, you know, sometimes you have this boss that doesn't work out so well. And yet you can learn something if you think of it in that way, in that more evolved way. If you're thinking about trying to learn something, if you make it through, you're better off, right? But oftentimes you see people pop out the minute anything goes wrong because there's a lot of jobs, there's a lot of opportunity out there. And I think the staying power, especially if you're in a company where the product is fantastic and the opportunity is there, it might just be worth staying throughout some of those tribulations. Yeah, that's some good advice. Yeah. You know, so one of the things you're known for, you have a long career at Williams Noma even even before you became c is that you came up with the idea for Pottery Barn Kids and then later that evolved into Pottery Barn Teen or there are some iconic brands in my opinion, you know, but what do today's kids and teens want in their bedrooms. And how is it different from when you were coming up with these ideas? I mean, my kids are adults. So, and I wrote the business plan for Potter and kids when I was pregnant. And so it's, you know, at that time, believe it or not, there was nothing for children's rooms. There was sort of the Laura Ashley and the Winnie, the pooh. And, you know, we all, I loved my Laura Ashley room. Oh my God. But now there's, you know, the kids have a lot more sophistication, fashion. Um And so there's a lot more choices out there. So we have to stay on top of what, you know, different things they like and not get too trendy, but also really encourage them to find their own identity in the rooms, which is their whole space and where they study and do all the things that we know they do in the rooms. Totally. There's more to talk about there. But um so, you know, we were talking before about, you know, the idea of maintaining a culture of entrepreneurship even within a legacy company like William Sonoma, you know, how do you do that? You know, it's a really good question and I don't know about you, but I'm always, I come to these things and I sit there and I think, am I thinking big enough, you know, am I stuck? Maybe I have been too long in this job and, and you push yourself to say what's next, what can be. And I think giving yourself that push to dream and to think big is super important to achieving things. And, you know, I had this boss who's now deceased Howard Lester, who I, you know, people give Chuck the credit of founding the company. I see Howard as the person who really built the company and I followed him after he had a couple other ceos in the interim and he was dying and I was very close to him and I um you know, I'm sure if you read Tuesdays with ma, right? Um I would fly down to the desert and talk to him and sit there and, you know, talk about business and say over and over to him. You know, how do you build entrepreneurship? What do you do? How do you put that into your culture? What's the answer? What's the answer? And he would just ignore me, ignore me, ignore me, change the subject, talk about lunch, whatever. And you know, it was getting towards the end. I knew it. I was like you got to answer this question for me like this is important to me. So just can you for one minute answer his questions and I can't, I won't try to do the accent. He's from Oklahoma. Um But you said Laura and threw a few expletives out there. Uh I did nothing all I do is hire people who are entrepreneurs and they are different and you have to find them. He goes, you got to find those people who are natural entrepreneurs and put them in the biggest job that you're comfortable with. You're probably not going to be comfortable with it. But that's how you get that next level of entrepreneurship. So, I think about that and, you know, are we doing enough to attract them, Are we doing enough to retain them? And I do think that there's both the carrot and the stick, you know, I mean, haven't we all been motivated by both where you hate it when they give you a hard time. But the most important lesson you learn is when somebody gives you the hard time. And, and so I think about that and just the importance of engagement and connection and seeing people, you know, not ignoring people and calling on them. And I think we tell a lot of stories at Williamson Oma and we have a lot of stories at practice. Women don't tell stories. And I think it's important, we get comfortable doing that because they're more memorable, right? The stories are memorable. And so if you tell a story about starting a business or a failure um to young women, they're likely to remember it and emulate it. And so that's what we do. Thank you so much, Laura. Well, if anyone has any questions for Laura, you can start thinking about it if there's any audience participation, you know, ok, we can come back to you. But you know, thinking of Williams Noma as a legacy brand, something that you're doing like many companies is fermenting with A I. But you know, you've talked about, you know, maintaining authenticity while you do that and specifically as a 67 year old company, how do you find that authenticity as you bring in this new technology? Yeah, I mean, customer service is personal, right? When you are served, well, it is generally that someone really understands what you're looking for. But at the same time, furnishing a house is daunting. It's complicated. You make mistakes, even if you're good at it. Even if you understand beauty and design, the spatial relativity of furniture is really a big problem for most people. And I just think about the next generation first in the, in the the next generation of innovation for us making that design process for your house or for your room easier, like easy, gorgeous, fun, orderly, you know, satisfying, fulfilling good investment quality. I think of all those things. How do you get there? You know, you can get a good person, but even that even the best designer makes mistakes. So what if we can take all the best designers and all the best rooms ever built and dump them together and really help you? We have a 3d room planner right now. This customer facing and also where you can go in and have our people help you. And what we're thinking about is as you drag and drop our furniture from our brands, we would say no, no, no, too close to the door or we'd tell you like, try these other three things with us here. And so we're working on building this and I just think this next generation is going to, it's going to enable better service, but it can't be artificial, it can't, there's a lot of mistakes with A I right now, we know that, you know, try to write a song, the song you write is going to be better than the one the A I writes for you. And the same thing with a room right now. So we have to figure out how to use it effectively and we have some great use cases right now that we're piloting that are really, really working. They're pretty simple though. And I think a lot of people talk about A I and I think what the hell are they talking about? And for me, it's just simply we're going to improve our customer service because we're going to have the knowledge of a lot of people who have decorated a lot of rooms or cooked a lot of things and done it successfully. And we're going to feed that to you based on what you're looking for. So as we talked about, you've been at Williams Noma for a long time. Would you ever run a different company? No, why not? I know it's my heart. I'm not looking for a different husband either. I am, I am like, fiercely loyal. I am, I am to a fault, loyal. And so, you know, I mean, you never say never. But I think if you're super present in what you're doing and you're not always thinking about the next thing which is counterintuitive to what most people tell you about careers. If you just stay present and you give it your all people notice and they connect better with you and you get more done. And so I just try to stay just fully immersed in what I do and that is Williams Sonoma. Well, thank you so much, Laura.

Our first Global Forum Outlook dinner of the year will bring together top CEOs from the Bay Area and beyond on May 2 at Mourad to discuss the role that transformative technologies are playing in addressing key challenges for business, from supply chain disruptions and global trade flows to talent retention and workplace collaboration. We’ll ask attending CEOs how they are turning unprecedented risk into unprecedented opportunity in this new era for business. These conversations will help inform the broader discussions that will take place at our Fortune Global Forum gathering in Abu Dhabi in November.  

Laura Alber
President, CEO, and Director, Williams-Sonoma
Carl Eschenbach
Co-CEO, Workday
Tom Siebel, 
Chairman and CEO, C3.ai

Global Forum Dinner 2023 | San Francisco

Laura Alber
President, CEO, and Director, Williams-Sonoma
Carl Eschenbach
Co-CEO, Workday
Tom Siebel, 
Chairman and CEO, C3.ai

Williams-Sonoma

Williams-Sonoma in Fortune Rankings

Williams-Sonoma stock chart

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