The queen of crafting a beautiful domestic life, Martha Stewart, has taken her online shop over to Amazon.
Amazon announced today that it had acquired Stewart’s American Made store to appear on its own Handmade.
All the products sold on Handmade will spotlight local artisans selected by Stewart and the editors of her magazine Martha Stewart Living. There are already hundreds of items on sale now.
Stewart made the leap to Amazon from eBay.
As the New York Times reports, “American Made, a venture introduced in 2013, was intended to be eBay’s answer to Etsy, the pioneer in the online handmade goods market.”
“It’s a much bigger audience,” Stewart told the Times about her move to Amazon. “It’s the powerhouse retailer online in the United States.”
She added: “It’s a step in the right direction, I think, to showcase the vast number of entrepreneurial small companies emerging in the United States. And some of these companies might become the giants of tomorrow.”
According to Amazon, since launching Handmade the selection has grown to about 200,000 items from more than 10,000 artisans worldwide. The Amazon home-goods shop is considered a competitor to Etsy, the handicraft site that has become an online sales juggernaut, moving almost $2 billion in goods last year, according to the Times.
We’re sure that for Stewart, and Amazon both, the deal will turn out to be a very good thing.
