Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE:WSM) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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But it’s changing so rapidly. And frankly, none of us here are economists. But we do know that we have a lot of levers to pull, we have a lot of growth strategies that are working. We talked to you about B2B, marketplace, global. You can see in our brands when you go through them, some really exciting initiatives that are not just interesting but they’re really producing great results, big one being accessible home for Pottery Barn and something that we think we can do across all brands, frankly. So despite what could be an uncertain environment, we see ourselves in a really good place like we were, if it’s going to be ’08 or if it’s even going to be the pandemic, I think people are always worried about what happens. And we tend to come out much better than most.

So, that’s my insight to what’s happening out there and how it affects our customer and what our opportunities are. Thanks for the question.

Cristina Fernández: And then as a follow-up, if demand were to slow further, can you give some examples of the levers you can pull on the cost side to preserve as much of the operating margin, if you can?

Laura Alber: Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Howie: Sure. Christina, we have quite a few levers, particularly on our SG&A line, where advertising, we can definitely adjust as we go. And the nice thing here is we have our own hands on the keyboards with our in-house marketing team who’s really agile and performance driven. We also have opportunities in unemployment, which, of course, leverage with sales with most of our employment in our distribution centers and stores and call centers. And then, there’s a number of other cost efficiencies we can drive throughout our operations to continue to leverage our SG&A to help our operating margin.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Adrienne Yih with Barclays.

Adrienne Yih: Great. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I’m sorry if I missed this, but

Laura Alber: Hi.

Adrienne Yih: Hi. How are you?

Laura Alber: Good. How are you?

Adrienne Yih: Good. Thank you. Could you — Jeff, could you just give me the digital penetration or growth where we’re sitting at kind of for the quarter? And then, Laura, I really wanted to congratulate you on the Starbucks, that win. If you can talk about — I know that they’re undergoing a sort of massive renovation, refresh of their entire store fleet. So I’m wondering where you think you can go from here, having done that flagship? And then, also for you, Laura, is India. As you look internationally, you’re opening stores, company-owned stores in Canada, are there any other markets in which you would contemplate owning your stores from a company-owned perspective versus franchising them? Thank you very much.

Laura Alber: Okay. Let me go backwards forwards. So, India, we just — Jeff and I actually had a chance to go over the ourselves and see our stores. And at the time, West Elm were the only stores opened. I’d tell you, they’re as good as any store here in the United States. And our partners, the Reliance Group are so good at digital and their marketing campaigns and the collaborators that we’re working with. And we just walked away saying, we got to really spend more time than we even think on this because this is a market where there’s enormous middle-class growing and a real potential for high-quality design and goods. There’s not much out there. So, we’re the first person out there with a full lifestyle suite of stuff. It reminds me of we first started Pottery Barn and brought furniture into our stores in the ’90s.

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