Martha Stewart Snaps Up a Blue-Light Special
Strange bed and bath fellows?
Kmart Corp., the nation’s second-largest discount retailer, and Martha Stewart, the multimedia queen of home and hearth, Wednesday announced an alliance to sell a full line of Stewart-branded bed and bath products at store-within-a-store displays at Kmart.
A separate line of Martha Stewart paint will be rolled out in May, designed for easy color coordination, even by the hard-of-fashion.
Stewart, known for the upscale, country club image honed by her Martha Stewart Living magazine, her books and television show, said linking herself with the price-cutting Kmart will not weaken that image.
“If it has style, why should I mind if it’s cheap?” she said Wednesday.
The idea is to team up Stewart’s celebrated design sense with Kmart’s mass-marketing reach. Stewart and Kmart signed an earlier licensing agreement nine years ago, but the deal all but fizzled under Kmart’s previous management.
Kmart’s new team, led by Chairman and Chief Executive Floyd Hall, aims to make the new Martha Stewart line the centerpiece of the store’s domestic products department. Hall said he is counting on such brand names to boost sales by attracting younger women, as the faltering chain tries to gain ground lost in recent years to Wal-Mart and Target.
Hall called the agreement “another step in the renaissance of Kmart.”
Wednesday’s announcement marks Stewart’s first major new venture since she acquired control of her company from Time Inc. two weeks ago.
She discussed the venture Wednesday during a media luncheon of grilled salmon, cold asparagus and risotto at her Long Island estate.
She used the 120-year-old, antique-filled summer house as a setting for the new Kmart line, letting reporters see how the sheets, shams, pillowcases, towels, throw rugs and toilet seat covers looked in her 13 bedrooms and 10 baths.
The new product line, dubbed Martha Stewart Everyday, will be launched March 1 with a $10-million television and print advertising blitz.
By year’s end, 750 of Kmart’s 2,145 stores will have the free-standing, 4,500-square-foot displays. And over the following two years, Kmart will extend the displays throughout the chain, in effect turning over the bed and bath section to the Stewart brand.
The display areas will air how-to decorating videos featuring Stewart and will be staffed by “Martha managers” to answer shoppers’ decorating questions.
The products will also be available for home delivery over a toll-free phone number and through Kmart’s World Wide Web site (https://www.kmart.com).
In marketing surveys to test consumer acceptance of the line, one anonymous shopper spoke for many when she said buying Martha Stewart merchandise in a down-to-earth setting like Kmart is appealing because “it takes away the perfect aspect of her.”
