Martha Stewart August 3

Ruthless and Single-Minded Martha Stewart

 Martha Stewart is an intriguing media personality, author of bestselling recipe book Entertaining; host of daily show Martha Stewart Show; publisher of magazine Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Wedding and Martha Stewart Kids; hosted the The Apprentice: Martha Stewart; a contributor of The Today Show; and convicted felon for lying and obstruction of justice in connection with insider trading charges.

The Setting of the Martha Stage

Martha Stewart hails from a good solid family of Polish-American stock and she spent her childhood in Nutley, New Jersey.  She learned cooking from her mother, gardening from her father, making jams and preserves from her grandmother.  Martha made straight A’s and went on to Barnard College on a partial scholarship.  Martha also moonlighted as a commercial model.

The stage was set and the foundations were built early.  She is smart, she has domestic talent, and she isn’t camera-shy or fame-shy.

Martha’s Honing

Martha worked as a stockbroker from 1967 to 1973 from which she learned the ins and outs of stocks trading.  She restored an old home she and her husband bought in Connecticut which gave her something to sink her artistic claws in.  She made use of her cooking skills when she started a catering business with Norma Collier in 1976.  The business’ clientele base was beginning to expand when Martha began taking clients on the sly; Martha has begun to look out for number one.

Martha’ Fame

Martha Stewart was asked by Crown Publishing Group to make a recipe book after the head honcho like what she did on one catering project.  Entertaining soon flooded the bookstores, made record sales, and propelled Martha’s career up.  The TV shows, the commercial endorsement, the magazines soon followed.

Martha’s Own

Martha made the decision to purchase all of her brands.  Martha wanted control.  Born was Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia which added catalogue sales to its range of services.  It went public but Martha still had absolute control with her 96% share.

Martha Got Caught

Martha Stewart held other stocks, one of which was that of a pharmaceutical company, ImClone.  Apparently, Martha Stewart’s daughter dated this company’s founder who informed Martha that the FDA denied approval of an experimental drug.  The day before the public announcement was made and the ImClone stock prices plummeted, Martha had sold her stocks and saved herself around $45,600 in losses.

The whole mess created a holy stink as apparently Martha wasn’t the only one with insider information who acted on it.  The founder, his family and closest friends all sold their ImClone stocks the day before or early on the day of the announcement; it was obviously a conspiracy.  Martha got caught and was fined $195,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, jailed and confined for obstruction of justice, prohibited from becoming a director of any public company so she had to resign from her CEO position on Omnimedia as well as her seat in the New York Stock Exchange and Revlon.

Martha Undaunted

After the dust has settled, Martha began the attempt to regain whatever foothold she had lost.  She, Donald Trump and NBC tried to push her down the throat of TV viewers through The Apprentice:  Martha Stewart but the public wouldn’t be rushed and the show died without chance of resuscitation after only one season.

Undaunted, however, she began rebuilding her business and her credibility with the continuance of her daily TV shows and her other business interests.  The rest, as they say, is history.