Williams Sonoma, Inc.: История развития американской компании товаров для дома и кухни.

American kitchenware and home furnishings company

Williams Sonoma, Inc. is an American publicly traded consumer retail company that sells kitchenware and home furnishings. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The company has 625 brick and mortar stores and distributes to more than 60 countries, with brands including Williams Sonoma, Williams Sonoma Home, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PBteen, West Elm, Mark and Graham, and Rejuvenation. Williams Sonoma, Inc. also operates through eight corresponding websites and a gift registry.

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. 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 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.

Country Franchisee Number of storesJan. 2024 Sources PotteryBarn P. B. Kids WestElm Williams Sonoma 6 6 7 2 5 ? ? 5 3 3 4 El Puerto de Liverpool 7 8 10 4 SSI Group Inc. 2 2 2 0 Hyundai Livart Furniture Co. Ltd. 4 5 11 4 Corporate 0 0 2 0 Middle East M. H. Alshaya Co. 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 4 4 7 5 5 5 1

In October 2001, the company opened its first international stores in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn stores in Yorkville occupied a combined 37,000 square feet of space at the retail podium of the 100 Bloor Street West condominium; these stores closed in 2017 after the landlord substantially raised rents in 2014.

In 2008, the company opened Pottery Barn and West Elm stores at Plaza Las Americas in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, a district of the capital San Juan. For Mexico, in 2014, El Puerto de Liverpool, which operates two nationwide department store chains (Liverpool) and Suburbia, signed a franchise agreement to operate stores and e commerce sites for six brands. Brand covered are Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, PB Teen, West Elm.

In 2010, Williams Sonoma, Inc. partnered with M. H. Alshaya Co. to launch Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids franchise operations in the Middle East.

Williams Sonoma, Inc. opened four stores (Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm) in Australia in 2015 as the first retail locations outside of North America owned and operated by Williams Sonoma, Inc.

In March 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement with Williams Sonoma, Inc. over false advertising claims where Goldtouch Bakeware products, Rejuvenation branded products, and Pottery Barn Teen and Pottery Barn Kids branded upholstered furniture products were falsely advertised as being made in the USA. As part of the settlement with the FTC, Williams Sonoma, Inc. agreed to stop making false, misleading or unsubstantiated "Made in USA" claims and is required to pay $1 million to the FTC. In April 2024, the FTC fined the Williams Sonoma almost $3.2 million for violating the FTC's 2020 order to be truthful about whether its products were made in the US, which marked the largest ever civil penalty in a "Made in USA" case.