Kid-size endeavor: Guidecraft teams with Martha Stewart brand on children’s’ home-office furniture

Since 1966, Tuxedo Park-based Guidecraft has designed furniture and toys for the educational market. But what happens when schools are closed due to a pandemic, with no guarantee that full-time lessons will resume on a regular basis?

For Guidecraft, the answer to that thorny question was no less a figure than Martha Stewart. The company teamed with Marquee Brands, which acquired the Martha Stewart brand in 2019, to create the new Martha Stewart Living and Learning Kids”™ Collection line of furniture.

“Each piece was thoughtfully designed with flexibility and function in mind to enhance children”™s home-based learning environments, a significant consideration as many schools across the nation anticipate full virtual learning for the foreseeable future,” said the promotional material for the new line.

“The collection pioneers the concept of a child”™s home office space and will provide children with a unique furniture system and workspace, inspiring them to create, organize, study, collect and curate.”

For Guidecraft President Gary Bilezikian, the union with the Martha Stewart brand opened the company to a new environment.

“We”™ve dabbled a bit in consumer furniture and had some success bringing over educational concepts, but without a real understanding of the consumer market,” he said.

“When the pandemic hit, we thought it”™d be a great opportunity to find a partner that could give us a helping hand in using some of what we know with a lot of what they know. The one that made sense was Martha Stewart ”” and they were open to the partnership, so we”™re just really fortunate, due to the timing of it.”

Adapting product designs from the classroom to the home required Guidecraft to reconsider some of its offerings in order to have them successfully adapt to a domestic setting.

“In a classroom, you”™re dealing with maybe 14 to 24 kids at a similar age,” Bilezikian explained. “And you want to design furniture that moves them through different areas and spaces in a classroom. When you”™re dealing with a home environment, you”™re looking at the ages and stages of learning and how they blend in with a playroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, a family room and then you”™re ultimately looking at scale.

“If an art table has storage and a large surface, it”™s for two kids,” he continued. “Also, two kids possibly have a parent who”™s going to pull up a stool and participate in the activities. So, the difference probably would be that a lot of children”™s furniture is made on the assumption that children do things by themselves. I think what the Martha Stewart team really embraced was the idea of togetherness and families. You need furniture that meets the needs of children and adults, and has the quality and is designed so that it looks appropriate in many different settings at home.”

Bilezikian added that the new product line uses items that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

“That is a responsible chain that goes all the way from the beginning of the life cycle of the material, whether from a forest to the mill, to the manufacturer, to the end consumer,” he said. “Additionally, all of our packaging is recyclable. We try and meet a responsibility in what we”™re putting into a home, both from what is discarded after the furniture is assembled to what goes into the home itself.”

Looking forward into 2021, Bilezikian said his company will be further studying the home-learning environment, particularly in regard to “what they”™re utilizing in the absence of a social structure.” And while the state of in-class schooling is still a work in progress in this country, Guidecraft is still supplying its products to countries overseas where classes are still in session.

“In the U.S., it is probably going to be end of the year or into next year before we start to see a meaningful recovery,” he said.