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Merchants mad for Martha's poncho

When lifestyle guru Martha Stewart was released from a West Virginia federal prison in early March after serving five months for lying about a stock sale, all eyes were on…her poncho. The crocheted coverup, hand-knit for Stewart by a fellow inmate, sparked a feeding frenzy of sorts for the poncho's pattern. Savvy knitting products marketers including Lion Brand Yarn and Sew-beautiful.com rushed patterns onto the market to capitalize on the craze. Lion Brand got there within a week of Stewart's release, posting a poncho pattern and knitting instructions on its Website; more than 600,000 users downloaded the pattern, and Lion Brand's sales reportedly jumped 39% in the two weeks after the design was posted. Too bad Stewart, founder of New York-based media and homemaking empire Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, folded her own catalog in February — she could have made a bundle on her own poncho pattern. It remains to be seen if Stewart will make electronic-monitoring ankle bracelets all the rage, however.

Austrian mailer's massive misnomer

BauMax, an Austrian housewares merchant, needs either a proofreader or an historian on its staff: The company's summer catalog features a tool shed called the Mauthausen, the same name as a Nazi concentration camp. The catalog came out in March, but the controversy didn't heat up until late April, when a local newspaper reported on the complaints of anti-Nazi activists. For its part, BauMax blames the gaffe on the company's decision to name models on towns and cities where it has branches. The model named for upper Austrian province of Mauthausen will now be known as the Linde, or “linden tree.” Ironically, the shed controversy broke less than two weeks before survivors and antiwar activists were scheduled to gather at the Mauthausen camp to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation by U.S. troops at the end of World War II.

Anthropologie gives shout out to Sri Lanka

Apparel and home decor cataloger/retailer Anthropologie shot its summer book along the southern coast of Sri Lanka just a few days before the tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated the region. The cataloger devotes the inside back page of the summer edition to the people of Sri Lanka, in particular to those its workers met in the town of Galle and a nearby fishing village called Unawatuna. Anthropologie has been in regular contact with the people it worked with there and reports that “thankfully, they are safe and working to rebuild their lives.” Anthropologie put its money where its mouth is: Employees raised money to donate to the locals, and the company matched contributions and donated the profits of some of its items to tsunami relief efforts. Way to give back, Anthropologie.