BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JANUARY 17, 2000 ISSUE
COVER STORY How Margaret Roach Makes Martha's Garden Grow The gardening guru is one of an army of experts expanding the Stewart universe The world of Martha Stewart is staffed with people like Margaret Roach. One minute, she's helping to shape pruning shears for Kmart. The next, she might be putting together a peonies package for the magazine or personally doling out mulching tips on TV. The veteran gardening editor describes herself as a focused self-starter with high standards and boundless passion for her subject. If Roach, 45, sounds a little too much like her boss, that's no mistake. Home is an antiques-stuffed cottage in the Bronx, infused with the colors of cranberry, khaki, and jade. And after a tough week of talking, dreaming, and doing gardening for various parts of the Martha Stewart empire, what does Roach go home to do? Garden. After all, Roach is less an editor than a resident expert charged with creating core content to be used across the company. Like many of her colleagues, she's also another face that's being put forward to balance the brand. "Margaret is just like me," says Stewart, who is trying to build an army of Mini-Me's who can sustain the growth of her company into a worldwide name. HER OWN TEAM. Roach is just one the whizzes Stewart is relying on. Marketers, designers, writers, and other professionals who can effortlessly apply their skills across the different media and merchandising outlets are crucial to the company's success. For example, Roach relies on partner Terry Sutton to turn her vision into actual products for retailers, online distribution, and the Martha By Mail catalog. Sutton will source material, work with manufacturers, and suggest what's hot in the world of retail. The eyes of Design Director Eric Pike could glide over everything from a seed book to the packaging of bulbs. The ad folks might sell space for the Web site or magazine. Then there's Roach's own team, which includes Stewart's head gardener and other experts. "We don't want anything to calcify into silos," Patrick explains. "Everything is organic." There's no danger of Roach calcifying. She has been stomping around flower patches for 25 years and maintains a separate garden in Upstate New York. After stints doing sports writing and covering fashion, she became a garden columnist for Newsday in the late 1980s. She began to contribute features to Martha Stewart Living magazine and joined the company full-time in 1995. During her interview with Stewart, they talked plants. "Martha and I could be on our last legs from a long day and, if you show us a new gardening catalog, we'll stay up an extra hour," she says. "We want to change the way that America gardens." SPOKESWOMAN. Big plans, but that's just the kind of talk you'd hear from Stewart herself. "The culture is pervasive," says Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Rich Fine, who sees Stewart's corps d'elite as a key to her long-term success. After all, says Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Crown Publishing Group, "there are only so many hands that Martha can sprout." And he knows the payoff better than most. In addition to publishing all of Stewart's titles, his imprint, Clarkson N. Potter Inc., recently published Roach's Way to Garden book as well. Meanwhile, Roach is busy cultivating her part of the fiefdom. There's a massive range of content to roll out at the Web site next year, as well as thousands of gardening products to hit store shelves, and a special show at New York's Botanical Garden. She would also like to write more -- not a tough task, perhaps, when one considers that she whipped off the text for Way to Garden in less than three weeks. Like her colleagues, she has taken to speaking before audiences, appearing on TV, hosting Web chats, and writing the greeting letter for her part of the site. "I'm encouraged to maximize my creativity, and I'm empowered by being paired up with people who are experts in their areas as well," she says. And where's Stewart? Never far away, but not always hovering, either. "She thought up the model," says Roach. "But we're encouraged to think big as well." The challenge may be less in growing the business than in sprinkling that Martha magic over the results. By Diane Brady _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS Martha Inc. COVER IMAGE: Martha Inc. CHART: Martha Stewart Inc... CHART: ...Rakes in Big Sales Gains...But Spending Curbs Profits TABLE: Martha's World TABLE: Mini Marthas A Picture-Perfect Target ONLINE ORIGINAL: How Margaret Roach Makes Martha's Garden Grow ONLINE ORIGINAL: Investors Aren't So Sure about Stewart's Style INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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