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


MPW Summit 2023: Home Sweet Home

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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.