Martha Stewart once made an astonishing $65 million a year from Kmart. The deal became her first major financial breakthrough and helped bankroll the lifestyle empire that followed.
The 85-year-old businesswoman recently opened up about those earnings while revisiting the deals that made her wealthy. Her Kmart royalties alone were enough to leave a podcast host staring in disbelief.
Martha Stewart reveals she once earned about $65 million a year from her Kmart deal
Stewart discussed the Kmart deal on the “Other People’s Business” podcast with MasterClass CEO David Rogier. “We were selling close to $2 billion worth of merchandise,” she explained, adding that the money funded “the whole development of my magazine, the whole business.” Rogier’s reaction was immediate. “Holy sh*t,” he said after hearing Stewart’s annual royalty figure.
Stewart signed the Kmart deal in the 1980s. She received royalties from every product she designed, while Kmart covered the advertising costs. The initial advertising budget reached $20 million. “We sold hundreds of millions of dollars of product, and they didn’t know we would,” Stewart recalled. She said Kmart “took a chance,” and she credited her then-husband, Andrew Stewart, for helping negotiate the arrangement.
The partnership eventually ended in 2009. Stewart also admitted that matching those earnings had become harder because companies offered much smaller royalties.
Kmart was only one piece of the fortune. Stewart said her catering business had grossed slightly more than $1 million before she became what she called the “original influencer” and “original tradwife.” She described those early years as “hard work … 24/7.” Her later ventures brought even bigger checks. Stewart said commercials sometimes paid millions in cash upfront, while her magazine earned “a lot” more than the $5 million Rogier guessed.
Her first cookbook advance was $100,000. Later deals brought substantially more because she had become “much more valuable” as an author.
Stewart also viewed television as essentially free advertising for everything else she sold. She pointed to the influence of celebrities like Kim Kardashian while explaining why she never followed the private-jet lifestyle. There was, however, a massive financial detour. Stewart said she “lost about a billion dollars” during her early 2000s legal troubles.
“The lawyers took me to the cleaners,” she said. After serving five months in prison, five months of home confinement and two years’ probation, Stewart added, “I’m back. I’m pretty good.”
