In 1956 the company founder, Chuck Williams, decided that America’s home chefs, himself included, should have access to the high-quality French cookware he had discovered on a recent trip to Paris. Williams-Sonoma started with a brilliant idea. We account for 4% of all home furnishings sales in the United States, almost half of which come through the web, making us the 21st largest online retailer in the country. This discipline has allowed us to build Williams-Sonoma into America’s preeminent home retailer, with seven brands and annual revenue approaching $5 billion. We start with a creative idea, test it, prove that it works, and then roll it out. The process is the same for nearly every decision we make, from brand introductions to ad buys, website and catalog design, and, increasingly, supplier relationships. We also placed ads targeting online shoppers who browsed that category. We set up the Mark and Graham website, printed the catalog, and marketed to customers in our database who had previously bought personalized items from us. Since we introduced the Pottery Barn Kids brand, in 1999, personalization has been a key component of our business, and by 2010 we could see that it presented a clear opportunity to develop a stand-alone brand. The recent launch of Mark and Graham, our monogrammed gifts and accessories brand, is a perfect case study in how we apply this kind of thinking to build successful new business concepts. In my 19 years at the company and four years as CEO, I’ve found that the very best solutions arise from a willingness to blend art with science, ideas with data, and instinct with analysis. If Williams-Sonoma has a “secret sauce,” it is these teams working together in remarkable alignment to develop and execute our strategic and tactical priorities. And in another, data analysts are at their computers, crunching numbers, building models, and analyzing reports. In another, brand and merchandise specialists are reviewing photography and revising catalog and website layouts according to projected sales. In one area designers are developing textiles, painting furniture, or spinning pottery.

Now it has reorganized to take its analytics to a whole new level.Īs I walk each day into the Williams-Sonoma headquarters on San Francisco’s waterfront, I’m struck by the varied types of creativity on display. The Idea: Thanks to its catalog heritage, the retailer was well positioned to collect and use data from customers and other sources. It accounts for 4% of all home furnishings sales in the United States, almost half of which come through the web, making it the 21st largest online retailer in the country. Williams-Sonoma comprises seven brands and has annual revenue approaching $5 billion. Today analytics infuses and enhances all areas of the business, from personalized website content for each visiting shopper to shipping and inventory management to extremely high-touch customer care centers. In 2000 it launched fully transactional websites for its two leading brands. As the company grew its brick-and-mortar presence, it also built up its mail-order business, acquiring a garden products catalog, the Hold Everything catalog, and Pottery Barn. Knowing where its catalog customers lived informed decisions about where to locate its stores. In 1970 the founder created a catalog to serve people around the country-and that was the beginning of the company’s data collection and analysis. Launched in 1956 in California’s emerging wine region, Williams-Sonoma soon moved to San Francisco because so many of its customers lived there.

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