Via Seattle Times:
Stewart’s company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, has faced some difficult blows lately: substantial financial losses and layoffs and cuts at its magazines and television programs. But Stewart, 71, the founder, has emerged as a patron saint for entrepreneurial hipsters, 20- and 30-somethings who, in a post-recessionary world, have begun their own pickling, cupcake and letterpress businesses and are selling crafty goods online.
Martha Stewart inspires new wave of tech-savvy entrepreneurs | Nation & World | The Seattle Times
Points:
- “Pilar Guzman, editor-in-chief of Martha Stewart Living magazine, said the magazine’s readership had become ‘the intersection between Colonial Williamsburg and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.’”
- “Many newer fans are skipping the print magazine entirely. MarthaStewart.com, the company’s primary website, has counted a 40 percent jump in traffic among 18- to 34-year-olds every month, year over year, since January.”
- “While some Martha Stewart fans abandoned their magazine subscriptions and Stewart’s high-thread-count sheets after she went to prison for her 2004 conviction for lying to federal investigators about a stock sale, this new generation of fans said her prison time only gives her more street credibility.”
- “Despite the encouraging news, Stewart’s company has not figured out how to make these loyal fans lift it out of its deep financial troubles, no matter how many costs are cut. In advance of its third-quarter earnings, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said it would cut back two of its four magazines and lay off about 70 employees, or 12 percent of the nearly 600-person company.”