When the Duchess of Sussex launched her lifestyle brand, As Ever, last month, products including her wildflower honey with honeycomb ($28 or £21.60) and edible flower sprinkles ($15 or £11.60) sold out within just 45 minutes.
I was among those who presumed that Meghan was using the oldest sales technique in the book: deliberately having only a tiny amount of supplies available for sale to create the illusion of huge demand.
Soon, I presumed, the range would be replenished with stock that had been held back so that the new company could cash in with further sales.
More than 50 days later, however, the online ‘shelves’ remain empty and her website is plastered with sad little ‘sold out’ signs.
Despite reports that her raspberry jam ($14 or £10.80) will return to shelves imminently, this week Meghan made an astonishing announcement.
It would, apparently, be too ‘easy’ to restock her brand. Instead, she is not going to sell anything more until next year – perhaps not for another ten months.
‘The easiest thing to do would have been to simply restock the products, which would likely sell out very quickly again.
But Meghan wants to take a step back, gather data from the launch, and figure out exactly what As Ever could be,’ reported Fast Company, the US business website which published an interview with the duchess yesterday.
The Duchess of Sussex on her lifestyle show With Love, Meghan, on Netflix earlier this year
Meghan made an astonishing announcement this week, saying she is not going to sell any more of her For Ever products until next year, but there are reports that her raspberry jam ($14 or £10.80) will return to shelves imminently
‘She says she’s planning to announce new products in the first quarter of 2026.’
Asked what might be in the pipeline, Meghan told the website: ‘I want to really focus on the hospitality angle of As Ever, but as we take the learnings, we can understand what the customer’s needs are seasonally.’
If you can understand Meghan’s marketing gobbledygook – the ‘learnings’ – then you are cleverer than me. But she seems to be suggesting that she might move away from food products to ‘hospitality’ goods such as tableware, cutlery and cookbooks, for which she has applied for trademarks.
The apparent shift in emphasis adds to the aura of chaos that has surrounded the brand since its rushed launch in March last year – which I fear may, in part, be my fault.
In March last year, I contacted Meghan’s office to inform them that I planned to run an item about her plans to launch a lifestyle company called ‘American Riviera Orchard’.
The duchess was apparently so desperate for the news not to appear first in the Daily Mail that she immediately launched the Instagram page for her brand after a four-year social media hiatus, complete with a glitzy video.
Given Meghan’s latest commercial manoeuvres, it is perhaps no surprise that Harry is developing new business connections of his own
At that stage, there was little information about the business which did not even have a chief executive.
Almost a year later, the company had still not started selling goods and interest seemed to be waning. But then Meghan made another surprising announcement: the brand’s name would be changed to As Ever.
She had been refused a trademark for her American Riviera Orchard brand – the ‘American Riviera’ being a common nickname for Santa Barbara where the Sussexes live – after the US Patent and Trademark Office said geographical locations could not be patented.
Meghan later claimed that she did not like her old brand name, saying in March that it had become a ‘word salad’.
Goodness know what Netflix makes of it all. The streaming giant – which broadcast Series One of her lifestyle show With Love, Meghan, earlier this year – is a commercial partner in As Ever.
But, back in London, a royal source tells me they are not surprised by the tortuous development of her brand.
‘Meghan made it clear that she did not always welcome advice,’ says my insider who worked at Buckingham Palace when she and Prince Harry were still working royals.
Given Meghan’s latest commercial manoeuvres, it is perhaps no surprise that Harry is developing new business connections of his own. This week, he made a surprise trip to China for a tourism conference in Shanghai – in support of his environmental initiative Travalyst, which he founded in 2019 – where he argued for sustainable travel.
It was the duke’s first visit to the communist state, but may well not be his last.
After all, if Meghan fails to make a fortune from As Ever, Harry could take a leaf out of his cousin Peter Phillips’s book.
In 2020, Princess Anne’s son famously appeared in a milk advert on Chinese TV. He was filmed accepting a glass of milk brought to him by a butler, taking a sip and comparing it to the creamy Jersey milk from the royal herd at Windsor that he was ‘brought up on’.
Another scene for a future Sussex documentary, perhaps?
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