Marni Shapiro: Okay. I don’t know why it’s not connecting nicely. But congrats on actually making it through what’s been a very tough environment for you guys. Laura, I just want to focus a little bit big picture and step away from the housing market interest rates and banks for the moment. You’ve had some really good collaborations, most recently LoveShackFancy. Could you talk a little bit, I guess, bigger picture about these collaborations? Are they bringing in new customers? Are they driving traffic to the stores? And then, I wanted to follow up on a comment you said about stores that you’re one of the few that actually people could come in and sit down on couches, and I witness this on a regular basis. So, can you talk a little bit about what you’re thinking about the stores going forward, I guess, more in the sense of servicing these stores?
It seems to me from spending a lot of time on new stores that people come in kind of prepared to buy as opposed to browsing, they’ve done their work online and they just want to now sit in the couch or touch the sheets or see how that kitchen — the dining chair feels. So, how has that changed kind of the staffing and how you approach sales and the store model?
Laura Alber: Thank you, Marni. So, let’s begin with the collaboration. It’s interesting. As much as we have our own in-house design team, we know that there are so many incredible designers out in the world doing adjacent things, sometimes in different categories. And our kids — our children’s business actually taught us the importance of collaborations as we recognize that children love Star Wars and Harry Porter and all those things, and to not give them that when they’re young seems like a little miss. So, we had for years been working on all of those kids’ collaborations and then started to bring in other collaborations in our adult brands. And we’ve seen success, things that are sort of historic designs like William Morris has been phenomenal for us and then turning to a trending design group, LoveShackFancy that is the hottest thing for young women now and bringing that to betting for children has been better than we even expected.
And we thought it would be good, and it really is dynamite. Chef collaborations are another category that you don’t want to forget about how important the chef community is to us and it’s mutually symbiotic. And we are not — we work with chef to not just have them talk about our products but also to develop products because oftentimes, who knows better than what the best pan would be than a chef. And you’ve seen all these chefs that have come in, and we’ve done exclusive collaborations with in our brands. So, this does have the impact of driving sales, but also bringing new customers in because sometimes these collaborators have a very different set of consumers that don’t know our brands. And so, that helps us bring in new people. And these people are very, very loyal to these collaborators.
Julia B in Pottery Barn is a really good example of that. So, we’re going to continue to feed that pipeline. We have some very exciting competitive confidential ones coming up this year. That’s great. And then, in terms of storage, we operate world-class retail business. And as I said earlier, our stores, they’re not flagships. They’re billboards for our brand and they’re profit centers, and they’re beautifully designed and curated with aspirational assortments. And we believe — we continue to believe that these serve as competitive advantages. This is possible because we invest in them. We keep them relevant and attractive with fresh new store formats, but we do it through testing. We don’t just change everything at once. You might have seen a couple of years back we put together a new Williams-Sonoma.
And we tested it right in our backyard here in Corte Madera, and we were thrilled with it. And that format is really outperforming. And so, as things come up for renewal, we are carefully making the investments to freshen up those stores. And it doesn’t — it means that we’re able to do more in the same or less space. And so, you’re right that people come in prepared to buy. We’re destinations. We like to have parking. We want to make it comfortable. But when you come in and you prepare it to buy, you also might come in and be inspired to buy something you don’t need. And that is why we think that our mix of furniture, but also decorative accessories and dinnerware and tabletop and all those other things that we sell and Williams-Sonoma food, create more visits to stores than some of the traditional home furnishings and furniture-based retailers.
Marni Shapiro: That’s very helpful. And can I follow up also just on the B2B because you guys have seen really extraordinary growth. And I think you mentioned that there’s still a backlog due to COVID, people are rethinking, I guess, the way their offices are just — some of them are downsizing and moving, which necessitates the same renovation. Do you — are you growing this team, are you still able to keep it really kind of small and nimble at this point?
Jeff Howie: Fortunately, what B2B does is it leverages all of the resources we have as a company, our in-house design team, our global sourcing organization, our supply chain team as well as our merchandising and inventory team. So, we’re able to keep this team pretty tight. There is a dedicated team that works with the contract space and customer service to make sure the larger orders are taken care of. But overall, we’re able to really leverage our existing resources without much incremental investment to drive the B2B business. It’s really more about what we have as our advantages in terms of our portfolio of brands, our in-house design, our global sourcing organic — capability and then our digital first but not digital-only channel strategy means we can service the customer in multiple ways. So for us, it continues to be a winning strategy, and we continue to capture market share in a fragmented marketplace.
Operator: At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to the Company for closing remarks.
Laura Alber: Yes. Thank you all for joining us, and look forward to talking to you next time. Goodbye.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.
