SiliconBeat

Williams-Sonoma, the San Francisco purveyor of home products, said today it will be laying off about 1,400, or 18 percent of its staff, and closing a call center in Pennsylvania and a distribution facility in Tennessee in an effort to cut its overhead costs by $75 million.

The actions are to be completed by the end of the month and will cost about $14 million to $15 million to accomplish, mostly in severance and lease-related costs. The moves will save an estimated $60 million in 2009, and another $15 million in savings will be accomplished  in cost reductions related to catalog catalog production, supply chain operations, and information technology.

Most of us have shared certain economic hardships recently — high gas prices, falling home values, diminished 401(k) balances. A subset of us have been dealing with foreclosures and job losses, problems that many of us can easily empathize with. Here’s one that may take a bit more of an imaginative leap: the margin call.

This week Howard Lester, the chief executive of Williams-Sonoma (ticker:WSM), the San Francisco-based retailer of deluxe goodies for our kitchens, living rooms, bath rooms and nurseries, was forced to sell Read the rest of this entry »