Martha Stewart is bringing something to her four decades of brand building that’s been missing for too long — her own stores.
The entrepreneur, tastemaker, TV personality and author, through Marquee Brands, the brand manager and owner of the Martha Stewart brand and 17 others, has quietly, or “soft,” opened two Martha Stewart stores. The first opened at the Mirdiff City Center in Dubai on May 22, and the second opened at the Dubai Hills Mall on July 17. A third Martha Stewart store is expected to open at the Mall of Emirates later this summer.
There’s been little noise about the first Martha Stewart stores at this point, but the big reveal will be in October when Stewart comes to Dubai for a grand opening.
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According to officials from Marquee Brands, additional Martha Stewart stores will be rolled out in India, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Some may or may not open this year, while others will happen next year. Timings are to be determined.
“We’ve created a beautifully designed space filled with products that I personally love and use,” said Stewart, in a statement provided to WWD. “I think customers will find inspiration and plenty of practical ideas for making their homes more beautiful, comfortable and functional.”
From Her Home to the Stores
She said the design of the store was inspired by her home in Bedford, N.Y., which she purchased about 25 years ago. With her first two stores, “Everything from the color palette to the building materials and architectural details was informed by Bedford,” Stewart said. “The color, Bedford Gray, and the marble used throughout the store reference my kitchen. The moldings and where and how they are placed also take their cues from my home. The soothing colors of the store provide a pleasurable experience and complement the colors of the changing inventory.
“There’s a strong line of design that derives directly from my home to the customer’s experience of shopping in the store,” Stewart said.
Apparel Group, a fashion and lifestyle retail conglomerate based in Dubai, is licensed to operate the Martha Stewart stores within the Gulf Cooperation Council, the alliance of six Middle Eastern countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. The Apparel Group runs more than 2,300 stores in 14 countries for more than 85 brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Skechers, Aldo, Charles & Keith and Tim Hortons. Additional retail operators will be licensed to operate Martha Stewart stores in regions outside the GCC and India.
At Martha’s new stores, which are 2,000 to 2,500 square feet in size, “the world” of Martha Stewart is on display. Specifically, each store carries the Martha by Martha Stewart cookware, baking tools, utensils and gadgets; entertaining essentials including serve ware, barware and dining accessories, and bedding and bath items, including what Stewart describes as “high-quality linens in sophisticated patterns and premium thread counts.” There is also a home fragrance line of candles, diffusers and room sprays, as well as a small amount of third-party products, but the assortment is overwhelmingly Martha Stewart.
Martha Stewart herself is very much associated with living the American Dream, living well, and an aspirational lifestyle, so why choose the Middle East as the launchpad, instead of the U.S., or maybe Europe?
“When we set about forming a strategy of really globalizing Martha and thought about where retail is very vibrant, where you have great service levels, great standards, great malls and great sales floor support, Dubai in particular rose very quickly to the top of that list,” explained Heath Golden, chief executive officer of Marquee Brands.
“Dubai and the Middle East now have become really the retail capital of the world. I used to always say it’s so important when you’re trying to build brands to be on the shelves in Paris. And today I’d say merchants from around the world spend more time looking at retail in the Middle East than they do in Paris. So strategically for us, it’s a big unlock. We are very data-driven, and the data showed us that Martha Stewart is a really compelling, sought-after brand there. So all the stars aligned for us with a great partner.
“When you think about the GCC plus India, it’s over a billion and a half people and over $5 trillion of GDP and growing,” Golden added. “Retail is hard, so you have to go to where it’s working really, really well, and there are a few, very good operators in that region who do a great job with Western brands. We think we have the best in the Apparel Group.”
“Martha Stewart the brand is an anomaly. There’s nothing like Martha Stewart,” added Natasha Fishman, chief marketing officer at Marquee Brands. “Whether it’s cooking, dining, gardening, entertaining, organizing, or pet keeping, she brings that authority. The stores that have been launched and opened in Dubai are a testament to that curation, that edit of how a lifestyle comes to life, and about living well. That is what these two stores bring to life.”
Adapting the Offering
Due to regional preferences, some categories will be emphasized over others, as Golden pointed out. “If you want to compare the Middle East to America, you would find fragrance has an outsized place in Middle East home retail, so we’ve really distorted that compared to what you’d experience anywhere else,” he said. Perhaps even more significantly, Golden expects Middle Eastern shoppers will respond to what he believes Martha Stewart, unlike other brands, offers, which is “the ability to have an aesthetic that you can really easily execute across your home,” he said.
With executing the store design, Stewart was “very much involved, though it’s been a partnership,” between Marquee, Apparel Group and Stewart, said Golden. Kevin Sharkey, chief creative officer for the Martha Stewart brand, was also deeply involved. The Apparel Group led the store build-out, while Marquee oversees the branding and helped with product direction. The assortment on shelves comes from existing Martha Stewart licensee partners, along with some locally curated and region-specific product development.
“The merchandising puts the product front and center with soft home around the exterior, and then kitchen and dining through the core of the store,” Golden said.
In April 2019, Marquee Brands acquired the Martha Stewart brand as well as the Emeril Lagasse brand from Sequential Brands Group for about $175 million. At the time, the Martha Stewart brand had reported sales of more than $1 billion.
More Food and Beverage
The approach for Martha Stewart In the U.S. is somewhat different from the Middle East but it’s still about growth. Golden said Marquee is extending the food and beverage component of the brand, and cited The Bedford by Martha Stewart, a restaurant/retail concept operated by Caesars Entertainment at the Paris Las Vegas hotel since August 2022. The Bedford by Martha Stewart concept will open a second location at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn. in spring 2026, Golden said.
Inside the restaurant, there is the “Brown Room,” which replicates a dining area at Stewart’s Bedford home. The restaurant experiences, Golden said, “are highly immersive. You dine on Martha Stewart tableware, cutlery, glassware and we enable you to buy all that,” by ordering online on the spot. “You can get her perogies to start. You’d get a Martha martini, which is served with great flourish, with an oversize shaker and Martha’s favorite vodka. And you can order her roast chicken from her cookbook, and then end with chocolate cake. Yes, it’s very much a Martha experience,” with a menu right out of Stewart’s cookbooks. “You’ll see us continue to expand down that direction,” with Stewart’s F&B.
On another growth front, “Marketplace is more important than ever,” Golden said. “You see the world of Martha on Amazon, which we launched in 2023. Martha has been on the landing page of Amazon several times now. It’s a very wide breadth of assortment. It’s the Martha department store, if you will — and that’s a strategy we’re expanding around the world. We’re in partnership with Amazon across Europe, whether that’s the U.K., or elsewhere on the continent. I expect you also will see us roll that out across various Asian marketplaces,” with other marketplaces.
Martha Stewart also sells her products in the U.S. at JCPenney, Walmart, Tractor Supply and QVC.
Opening her own brick-and-mortar retail stores has been a dream for Stewart. In October, when Kmart closed its last stores, Stewart waxed nostalgically with WWD on how launching her brand at the discounter in 1987 really put her on the map in terms of appealing to the masses.
Even as Kmart showed signs of floundering, she thought the chain could be converted to, as she said, “K Stewart” stores. “What Kmart did was make fairly priced, good quality merchandise available to the widest possible audience. That was a fabulous thing. I was a big fan of that store. We even considered buying Kmart. Imagine — K Martha. We just didn’t do it. We should have,” she told WWD.
At Marquee Brands, the Martha Stewart retail rollout reflects an overarching strategy to develop a greater brick-and-mortar presence across its brand portfolio. Of particular note is the plan for Sur La Table, which on July 11 opened its first Dubai location, in the Dubai Hills Mall, also in partnership with Apparel Group. It’s part of a larger international expansion for the culinary brand involving opening Sur La Table shops-in-shop in additional @Home stores in South Africa, and a Sur La Table U.K. Amazon brand page scheduled to debut later this year, with tabletop, cookware and kitchen electronics. Sur La Table offers cookware, bakeware, kitchen electronics and gadgets, cutlery, flatware, prep, storage and organizers, drink ware, barware, coffee and tea accessories, as well as demos and cooking classes. Sur La Table also offers a program of “Culinary Journeys” to Bordeaux, Provence, Puglia and other destinations. Marquee bought Sur La Table in 2020, with an $88.9 million bid that brought the kitchenware retailer out of bankruptcy.
With Marquee’s 18 brands, “We’re focused on growing them globally, around the world, in a very ‘on brand’ way, with our partners the Apparel Group in the Middle East region,” said Golden.
Aside from expanding the Martha Stewart and Sur La Table brands in the Middle East, the BCBG, Ben Sherman and Bruno Magli brands are on the agenda as well, he said. Marquee Brands, established in 2014 by Neuberger Berman, generates more than $4.2 billion in annual retail sales.
“It’s been a real strategy at Marquee to grow our global sales,” said Golden. “We’ve more than tripled them over the past three years, and getting these stores open in partnership with our wonderful partners really accelerates global sales. Every brand wants to have retail expression. If we’re in the brand business, that’s what we want to see. So Sur La Table has been a real model for us to work from as we bring our brands to market into retail.”
“Sur La Table has an incredible footprint. We have a couple of different formats,” said Fishman. “Sur La Table is sort of our model from a retail perspective, which has been very beneficial as we’re rolling out our retail strategy.”
Neeraj Teckchandani, CEO of the Apparel Group, said in a statement, “Launching Martha Stewart in the region is part of our larger strategy to continually elevate retail experiences and bring premium global names closer to our customers. Martha’s legacy as a pioneer in home and lifestyle aligns perfectly with the evolving needs of our market. We’re proud to partner with Marquee Brands to shape a new chapter in home retail across the GCC.”
The Apparel Group is the “flagship” company of AppCorp, a Dubai-based diverse multibillion-dollar enterprise involved in retail, retail estate, food, beverage, logistics, education, health care, investing and app development.
