The 90-year-old pioneer behind Williams-Sonoma

Nearly 50 years ago, a former department-store window dresser and gourmet home cook took an old hardware store in a rural California town and turned it into a groundbreaking store that changed the way Americans shop for kitchenware.

Chuck Williams, who turned 90 Sunday, is credited with introducing American consumers to restaurant-quality European cookware and small appliances and displaying them in a glamorous setting.

Without Williams, cooks might not have learned quite so soon to make pesto in a food processor or to dress a salad with a dash of balsamic vinegar.

As Williams tells it, it was on a two-week vacation trip to Paris in 1953 that he got the idea for an upscale kitchenware store.

"I couldn't get over seeing so many great things for cooking, the heavy pots and pans, white porcelain ovenware, country earthenware, great tools and professional knives," Williams said in a recent telephone interview from his office in San Francisco. "Here, it was different. For the home cook, there were thin pans in not a lot of sizes, and tools were on the cheap side. In those days, people bought kitchenwares in hardware and department stores."

So Williams said to himself, "I'll have a small shop." In 1956, he combined his surname with the name of the rural town where he bought the hardware store and called the new venture Williams-Sonoma. He carefully filled the shelves with such things as copper sauté pans, huge stockpots, high-quality vegetable peelers, Sabatier knives and French kitchen towels.

From his years of work in department stores, he knew the importance of positioning merchandise.

In a kitchenware store, "if the merchandise is not displayed well for customers, they are not going to buy it. They won't see it. The handle of the saucepan has to be turned toward the customer. Everything has to have a little space around it. You only have a fraction of a second to get their eye, then they move on."

It was not long before friends convinced Williams that San Francisco would be a better location for such a store, and he moved the business there in 1958. After 10 years of annual buying trips to France, he broadened his search for functional items with good design by going to England, Italy and Germany. In 1971, at the suggestion of a customer, he produced his first store catalog.

Two years later, Williams realized that he needed help running and expanding his company. A management team was brought in and in short order, branch locations opened in three upscale California communities: Beverly Hills, Palo Alto and Costa Mesa. But as the company grew to $4 million in annual sales, debt grew at a faster rate. Williams-Sonoma was in trouble. Williams saw no alternative but to sell.

"Unfortunately, the [management team] ran the company into the ground," says W. Howard Lester, the former computer software executive who purchased Williams-Sonoma in 1978 for a reported $100,000. "I talked Chuck into staying on as a buyer and adviser" — Williams is "the best housewares merchant the world has ever seen," Lester says — "and the rest is history."

Today, Williams-Sonoma Inc., the parent company, has evolved into a retail giant with more than 560 stores in North America as well as catalog and Web-site sales from its kitchenware stores and its Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Teen, Pottery Barn Kids, Hold Everything and West Elm divisions. The first Williams-Sonoma Home store is scheduled to open Friday in West Hollywood. For 2004, net sales reached $2.8 billion, a 16.7 percent increase over the previous year. Net earnings have tripled since 2000.

Lester, the chairman of the board, engineered the company's broad expansion into stores that sell things for every room in the house. "Left to Chuck, there would still only be one store. He never had a desire to build a brand," says Lester. He estimates that 25 percent of the company's revenue comes from its nearly 250 kitchenware stores and Internet and catalog sales. The company went public in 1983.

Victoria Matranga, design programs coordinator for the International Housewares Association, calls Williams "a pathbreaker."

"He set the stage for the success of specialty stores. And today, when department stores are losing customers, it's the specialty stores that are capturing the imagination and the dollars," she says.

"He took the concept of a mom-and-pop gourmet store with individual service and transferred it to a mass concept," says Bill McLoughlin, executive editor of HomeWorld Business, a housewares trade publication. In August, the 20-millionth Williams-Sonoma cookbook was shipped.

Next Williams plans to edit a new series of cookbooks — the "mastering" series covering, in order, grilling, vegetables and frozen desserts, for release in the spring. And when a new store opens, he is there to cheer on the sales team.