Martha’s Furniture Selling Well as She Sits in Jai
New York, October 26--While Martha Stewart lives in a prison where sleeping in a bottom bunk is considered a luxury, her furniture line is selling like World Series tickets, according to a Stamford home furnishings magnate and Stewart's manufacturer in North Carolina, according to the Stamford, Connecticut Advocate.
"There is something magical about this furniture and people are buying it left and right," said Michael Yaraghi, owner of Safavieh Home & Carpet and its sister store, American Home Furniture, on Atlantic Street in downtown Stamford.
"It is a good-looking product and people say, 'We want that in our house,' despite what's going on with her going to jail and the negative publicity," Yaraghi said. "I have never seen a new product that has been this popular."
American Home Furniture began selling Martha Stewart Signature furniture last month at its 18,000-square-foot store at 200 Atlantic St. Since then, the line has sold at a pace that would yield $700 to $800 per square foot in annual revenue, said Yaraghi, who opened the American Home store in August.
The Martha Stewart brand takes up about 2,000 square feet in the store. Retail prices for Martha Stewart furniture at American Home range from $999 for a dining table, $1,199 for a sofa, $1,999 for an armoire and $899 to $1,200 for a bed (the mattress is extra), according to Yaraghi.
Yaraghi said other brands that American Home Furniture in Stamford sells, such as Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne and Nautica, reap about $200 to $300 per square foot, based on full-year projections.
Stewart, who parlayed a catering, crafts and decorating career into an $245 million publishing, television and merchandising empire, reported Oct. 8 to Federal Prison Camp at Alderson, W. Va., for a five-month sentence. The 63-year-old Stewart was convicted in March of lying to authorities about her December 2001 sale of shares in ImClone Systems Inc. She is appealing the conviction.
As she serves her time amid countless comedic renderings of how she might decorate her cell or cook for fellow inmates, New York City-based Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. said Oct. 13 that it plans to put 43 new Martha Stewart furniture pieces on the market by spring. That new cache would bring her furniture
line to a total of 198 pieces.
About 270 stores nationwide, which include independent merchants such as American Home Furniture and retail chains such as Marshall Fields, sell Martha Stewart furniture, according to Bernhardt Furniture Co. Martha Stewart Living plans to add dealers for its furniture line in markets around the country, said Deanna Caceres Cahn, brand manager for Martha Stewart Signature furniture.
"Dealers keep asking for more. It has been a great performer for Bernhardt and us," Cahn said.
High Point, N.C.-based Bernhardt has been making the Martha Stewart line since 2002.
In greater New York region, stores that sell Martha Stewart furniture include American Home Furniture at the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, N.Y., Lillian August in Danbury, Foremost Furniture in New York City and Connecticut Home Interiors in West Hartford.
The Palisades Center store has been selling Martha Stewart furniture at an annualized pace of $600 per square foot per year since it introduced the line three months ago, Yaraghi said. With 2,000 square feet set aside for the products, the store would have annual revenues of $1.2 million for Martha's tables, chairs, armoires and other items.
"All the new Amercian Home stores will have Martha Stewart furniture because it has been so successful in the first two (in Stamford and West Nyack)," Yaraghi said. He and his four brothers also own and operate nine Safavieh stores in the tri-state area.
Yaraghi said an American Home Furniture store that his family plans to open in March in the Danbury Fair mall will carry the Martha Stewart line.
