Making a Living (and a Life) Abroad

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Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living Reach Settlement

NEW YORK — Macy's and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia say they have settled a breach-of-contract lawsuit involving J.C. Penney.

But Macy's said the settlement does not impact its lawsuit against J.C. Penney Co., which is still ongoing.

Macy's Inc. and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. said Thursday that their settlement terms are confidential and not material to their businesses. Both companies said that they look forward to "a continued, successful partnership together."

Macy's has had an exclusive merchandising contract with Martha Stewart since 2006, including items like bedding and bath products.

Stewart's company and Penney signed a merchandising deal in December 2011 to develop mini Martha Stewart shops. That prompted Macy's to sue both companies for violating its exclusive agreement with Martha Stewart.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and J.C. Penney have already scaled back their partnership. In October the department store chain said it would no longer sell a broad range of home and bath products designed by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia but would continue to sell a smaller batch of Martha Stewart items, including window treatments, rugs and party supplies.

Martha Stewart is looking to boost merchandising sales as it continues to grapple with a weak publishing business amid sluggish advertising sales. In October it said its quarterly net loss narrowed, though revenue fell 22 percent to $33.8 million, hurt by weakness in its broadcasting and publishing divisions.

Macy's, meanwhile, has been seeing strong sales. In November it said quarterly net income rose 22 percent will revenue rose 3 percent to $6.28 billion.

J.C. Penney spokeswoman Daphne Avila said the company had no comment on the Macy's settlement with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

In morning trading Thursday, Macy's shares rose 40 cents to $53.80, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia rose 19 cents to $4.39 and J.C. Penney slipped 11 cents to $9.04.

Martha Stewart Living and Macy’s Settle Dispute and Keep Partnership

On Thursday, Macy’s and Martha Stewart announced that they had settled the breach-of-contract case, saying the details were confidential and not material to either company. They said their partnership would continue, but declined to comment further.

Macy’s larger suit against J. C. Penney still remains. Macy’s said the settlement with Martha Stewart Living would not affect that case.

Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living joined forces in 2006 with an agreement to sell “Martha Stewart” branded products in Macy’s stores, including exclusive items like kitchenware and bedding. The partnership has done well over the years, accounting for $250 million in sales in 2012.

But Martha Stewart Living and J. C. Penney announced a deal in 2011 to sell home décor products out of Martha Stewart store-within-a-store locations at Penney’s stores. The move was part of a broader turnaround effort by J. C. Penney’s previous chief executive, Ron Johnson, who was fired last year as losses mounted at the retailer.

After the deal was announced, Macy’s sued them both, saying the deal violated the terms of its original contract with Martha Stewart Living. The retailer called for pulling certain items off Penney’s shelves and demanded compensation for loss of profits. Penney and Martha Stewart Living countered that their agreement fell into an exception carved out in the Macy’s contract.

Days before a judge was expected to rule on the Penney case, Penney and Martha Stewart Living backed down, revising their agreement to exclude kitchen, bed and bath products, items that the Macy’s suit said were exclusive. In effect, J. C. Penney gave up many core home décor products and was left with items like rugs and window treatments.

Theodore M. Grossman of the Jones Day law firm, the lead counsel for Macy’s in the case, said at the time that the new agreement “was a complete surrender.”

With the settlement, Martha Stewart Living puts to rest a costly and contentious case. In October, Martha Stewart Living reported a disappointing third quarter, partly because the diminished relationship with J. C. Penney had cut into revenue. J. C. Penney has shown some signs of improvement in recent months, although it continues to post losses.

Macy’s has been a standout. The company’s earnings per share increased 31 percent over the same period the year before, easily beating analysts’ expectations.

The iEconomy: As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living

But they did not actually have jobs at Apple. It was freelance work that came with nothing in the way of a regular income, health insurance or retirement plan. Instead, the Grimeses tried to prepare by willingly, even eagerly, throwing overboard just about everything they could.

They sold one of their cars, gave some possessions to relatives and sold others in a yard sale, rented out their six-bedroom house and stayed with family for a while. They even cashed in Mr. Grimes’s 401(k).

“We didn’t lose any sleep over it,” said Mr. Grimes, 32. “I’ll retire when I die.”

The couple’s chosen field is so new it did not even exist a few years ago: writing software applications for mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad. Even as unemployment remained stubbornly high and the economy struggled to emerge from the recession’s shadow, the ranks of computer software engineers, including app writers, increased nearly 8 percent in 2010 to more than a million, according to the latest available government data for that category. These software engineers now outnumber farmers and have almost caught up with lawyers.

Much as the Web set off the dot-com boom 15 years ago, apps have inspired a new class of entrepreneurs. These innovators have turned cellphones and tablets into tools for discovering, organizing and controlling the world, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry virtually overnight. The iPhone and iPad have about 700,000 apps, from Instagram to Angry Birds.

Yet with the American economy yielding few good opportunities in recent years, there is debate about how real, and lasting, the rise in app employment might be.

Despite the rumors of hordes of hip programmers starting million-dollar businesses from their kitchen tables, only a small minority of developers actually make a living by creating their own apps, according to surveys and experts. The Grimeses began their venture with high hopes, but their apps, most of them for toddlers, did not come quickly enough or sell fast enough.

And programming is not a skill that just anyone can learn. While people already employed in tech jobs have added app writing to their résumés, the profession offers few options to most unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers.

One success story is Ethan Nicholas, who earned more than $1 million in 2009 after writing a game for the iPhone. But he says the app writing world has experienced tectonic shifts since then.

“Can someone drop everything and start writing apps? Sure,” said Mr. Nicholas, 34, who quit his job to write apps after iShoot, an artillery game, became a sensation. “Can they start writing good apps? Not often, no. I got lucky with iShoot, because back then a decent app could still be successful. But competition is fierce nowadays, and decent isn’t good enough.”

The boom in apps comes as economists are debating the changing nature of work, which technology is reshaping at an accelerating speed. The upheaval, in some ways echoing the mechanization of agriculture a century ago, began its latest turbulent phase with the migration of tech manufacturing to places like China. Now service and even white-collar jobs, like file clerks and data entry specialists or office support staff and mechanical drafters, are disappearing.

“Technology is always destroying jobs and always creating jobs, but in recent years the destruction has been happening faster than the creation,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business.

Still, the digital transition is creating enormous wealth and opportunity. Four of the most valuable American companies — Apple, Google, Microsoft and I.B.M. — are rooted in technology. And it was Apple, more than any other company, that set off the app revolution with the iPhone and iPad. Since Apple unleashed the world’s freelance coders to build applications four years ago, it has paid them more than $6.5 billion in royalties.