A

MARTHA STEWART
1941-

ENTREPRENEUR, PROFESSIONAL
HOMEMAKER

"K-Martha."

Teaching people how to set the right kind of table, or create an elegant dessert, or make the perfect Christmas wreath may have been enough for Martha Stewart in the 1980s. In the 1990s, however, Stewart set out to conquer the world. In 1997, aligning herself in a newly revised business partnership with the discount retailer K-Mart, Stewart unveiled a series of products from sheets to paint designed to increase the sales and profits of both K-Mart and herself. She also weighed in on issues from dyeing Easter eggs to collecting glass in her "ask Martha" newspaper column that reached an estimated eighty-eight million readers a month, launched a new web business that combined how-to advice with the sales of related domestic merchandise, and appeared on her own television program. Probably the biggest event though of the Stewart story was the unveiling of Martha as stock entity when shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public in October 1999.

The Everyday Martha

People across the United States have listened to Stewart's advice for years. The daughter of Polish American teachers, Stewart, a graduate of Barnard College and a former stockbroker, has amassed a small fortune showing people how to make simple things better and thereby to make their lives '"nicer and prettier." She has offered her expertise on everything from baking the perfect sugar cookie to achieving just the right color for Easter eggs. She has influenced contemporary American taste and design to such an extent that many upscale furniture and interior-design companies, such as The Pottery Barn, rely on her vision to determine the products they sell. Like Ralph Lauren, Stewart has been credited not only with designing products to complement a particular lifestyle, but with helping to create and maintain that lifestyle itself

"And That's A Good Thing."

When K-Mart officials learned that more people trusted Stewart than their own doctors, they wasted no time in proposing a new partnership (she was already serving as a design consultant to the company) that not only netted Stewart a sizable profit up front, but guaranteed her a percentage of every "Martha Item" sold. The Stewart empire did not end there. Stewart also launched her own website, a mail-order catalogue, and a syndicated television show. Along with her magazine, Martha Stewart Living, launched in 1991, the new ventures made Stewart one of the most visible, recognized, and influential figures of the 1990s. During the decade, Stewart became for many Americans the last word in home decor, as well as cooking, baking, and entertaining.