Martha Stewart employees search for way out due to sale
Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/APMartha Stewart Living Omnimedia is up for sale, and senior level employees are searching for any way out.
Martha Stewart Living employees are scrambling for their professional lives.
In late June, news broke that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was being sold for $ 353 million. Now, after taking stock of the situation, senior-level employees are frantically looking for lifeboats. And we’re told that no one is feeling the pressure more than those who’ve been with Stewart the longest.
“It’s a mess over there,” according to a very senior Stewart employee who’s now looking for a new job. This insider says newer hires aren’t reading the prose on the wall as closely as senior staffers, who are running frightened.
People with long careers at the company, which opened in 1997, “are the ones most in dread of what the takeover will mean,” moans our Stewart source, who knows just which employees are looking for the exit.
“I keep getting LinkedIn requirements from colleagues,” our worried spy says.
News came late last month that Stewart’s struggling operation had reached an covenant to be bought by the Sequential Brands company, whose properties include Linens ’N Things and the Franklin Mint. The very next day, it was reported that leaks about the sale had compromised the deal. Additional potential buyers now are looking to snatch it up at the right fee.
Uncredited/PR NEWSWIREYear-end layoffs have become the norm lately at MSLO, with nearly 100 employees being let go at the end of 2013, following other layoffs around Thanksgiving of 2012.
This volatility comes nine months after MSLO handed control of print properties, including the Martha Stewart Living and Weddings publications, to the Meredith Corp. More than four dozen employees were laid off, and one tells us that longtime friends still at MSLO say the living have come to envy the dead.
“Now that this (sale) has happened, everyone is rushing to get out,” our second source confirms.
Year-end massacres have become familiar. Nearly 100 employees were let go at the end of 2013, following other layoffs around Thanksgiving of 2012.
“People I know are looking for jobs during the work week, because what’s the point?” says that second source. “Martha (above) might stay on, but she’ll be the last one standing.”
A representative for Martha Stewart Living did not restore requirements for note.
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