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 "askMartha" 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...