Martha Stewart Everyday

"Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide." - Anon.

The one-woman corporate phenomenon that is Martha Stewart rented Guild Hall one morning last week to introduce a new line of bed and bath furnishings to representatives of the metropolitan media, some of whom turned around the next morning and bit the hand that also fed them a lavish buffet lunch.

Why hold the briefing in East Hampton? Because, Ms. Stewart told her guests as they arrived at her Lily Pond Lane house afterward, "I have 13 bedrooms!"

All 13 were elegantly dressed for the occasion: sheets, comforters, shams, and bedskirts in ginghams and florals, madras designs and solids, with coordinating bath towels, rugs, shower curtains, and other accessories.

The Martha Touch

The new line, which includes 256 "original" paint colors, added a distinctively Martha touch to the collection of antique beds in Ms. Stewart's more than 100-year-old residence.

It will be sold exclusively at Kmart. The retail giant and the lifestyle guru have had a licensing agreement for several years.

The idea of the new joint venture, Ms. Stewart explained to more than two dozen reporters taking copious notes in the John Drew Theater, was to "give my style to as large an audience as possible - to teach."

"In every way," said the woman who has become the last word in homemaking, "I am a teacher. We're going to bring along," into the fold, as it were, "those customers who don't have the imagination to mix and match" fabric designs and patterns themselves.

Teachers And Preachers

Appropriately enough, Ms. Stewart's circa 1873 house once belonged to one of East Hampton's memorable preachers. It stands on a site that used to be called "Divinity Hill," for the many ministers from New York and Brooklyn who stayed at its boarding houses or in "cottages" such as hers.

Old-timers still call her place the DeWitt Talmage house, for a longtime summer resident for whom it was renovated extensively in 1893. The Rev. Talmage's fiery sermons in the city reportedly attracted as many as 3,000 parishioners on an average Sunday.

Ms. Stewart has completed her own renovation of the shingled house since buying it about five years ago, including a circular croquet court designed within a square of rose bushes.

Beach House Inspired

The editor of Martha Stewart Living, Stephen Drucker of Mill Hill Lane, East Hampton, said that Ms. Stewart loves East Hampton, and fashioned much of the "look" of "Martha Stewart Everyday," as the new line is called, from her sense of a classic East Hampton beach house.

Mr. Drucker came up with names for the new line of Sherwin-Williams interior latex paints. Many, he noted, such as "sunflower," "sandcastle," "beach glass," and "Atlantic," conjure up the natural hues of the East End.

Reporters who attended the briefing represented the Associated Press, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Daily News, Newsday, Time magazine, and various home and textile trade publications, among others.

"Beware," wrote The Daily News the next day, "Martha Stewart wants to go to bed with you." The New York Times noted that it is "yet to be seen whether a working mother with two toddlers has time to follow Ms. Stewart's advice for making beds with sharp hospital corners, as demonstrated on the store videos."

The Center Core

Speaking of her unlikely alliance with Kmart, Ms. Stewart said her partnership with a mass merchandiser was an opportunity to be in contact with a "different kind of customer - those with a limited income, or who are frugal."

Some 77 percent of all Americans shop at a Kmart at least once in the course of a year, she said. With more than 2,100 outlets, the chain is reportedly the country's second largest discount retailer.

Ms. Stewart added that Floyd Hall, the chief executive officer and president of Kmart, "treats me as a true partner, not just a licensee."

Mr. Hall himself was on hand. "We know we have a winner," he said of the new line. Three thousand vans of Martha Stewart Everyday merchandise have been transported to 750 Kmart stores in the last three weeks, he said.

Because of Ms. Stewart, he said, "domestics" have been moved from their traditional spot at the back of the stores, up to the "center core."

Big Ad Campaign

Most of the product line is being manufactured offshore, in such countries as Peru, Mexico, Columbia, India, and Egypt, and Ms. Stewart stressed that she has representatives "inspecting every plant" to assure that appropriate working conditions are maintained.

"I don't want any problems with the manufacture of my products," she said, such as other celebrities have experienced.

As to the venture's prospects, she said she started her magazine five years ago with 250,000 copies, but "knew it would be popular." Today its circulation is 2.3 million.

"I have the same feeling about this," she said.

The new line will cost from $1.99 for washcloths to $39.99 for king-sized sheet sets. Kmart expects to introduce a higher-priced line in all-cotton, including Egyptian cotton sheets and towels, in the fall.

Television commercials introducing the goods, part of a $10 million national multimedia advertising campaign starring Ms. Stewart, begin running today.

Living Omnimedia

Ms. Stewart has a second East Hampton house on Georgica Pond, where she has been involved in a legal wrangle with her neighbor, Harry Macklowe, a real estate magnate, over a wetlands area bordering their properties. Mr. Macklowe is said to be concerned also that Ms. Stewart intends to use the Georgica house, a modern structure designed and owned by the late Gordon Bunshaft, as a media site.

Earlier this month, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, her umbrella corporation, acquired Living Enterprises, which includes Ms. Stewart's monthly magazine, from Time Warner. The corporation also owns her syndicated television programs, a series of books, a newspaper column syndicated in more than 200 papers, her merchandising partnerships, such as those announced this week, and a mail-order catalogue company, "Martha by Mail."

Forbes magazine recently estimated the value of her enterprises at $200 million.

The products in Ms. Stewart's new line can be ordered from a toll-free number or from Kmart's on-line Website, which are the only ways The Star's readers can purchase them, unless they travel to Old Country Road in Riverhead - the closest Kmart.