To think zoella is lying

[Itsgonnabeacoldone]

Skip to 33. The calendar that her own company makes she says it's all down to boots and they choose the £50 price. She's been doing products for years and has full ownership of her company. She's not new or anything to releasing products

It's been on sale for two months and it's her name on it and was apparently only sad in the last few days when the backlash started.

Her body language is all off, avoiding eye contact and looking around. She says shes not in it for the money but has a long history of releasing cheap stuff for high prices.

Pricing is legally down to the retailer. You can't tell them a price to sell at.

So you really believe that Zoella had no clue what it would sell at until it hit the shelves?

And no one is saying Boots isn't to blame - just that this 'not my fault in any way, I'm so sad' is ridiculous (from a businesswoman!).

I think it's actually pretty clear that it was always designed to go in the sale at £25, and so £50 was always a bit of a fictional price/a con for those who actually bought it when it was released. But obviously neither party can admit that, as it's a complete scam to deliberately mark it up just to mark it down (albeit one that happens all the time, eg wine).

To be fair to her, she could have designed a lovely advent calendar with nice things in it. Boots could have come back, as they do, and said no way, you need to cut the costs by 75%. And this is the result

A year?! LOL.

If she has any pride or care over her product she would ok it every step of the way. Not just do the 'fun part' of picking toys, trinkets and scents. There's no way she didn't know how much it was selling for.

Not necessarily, Roomster. The wholesale price may have been dropped, with Boots agreeing to take the flak (in return for being allowed to continue being associated with the very lucrative brand - after all, Superdrug have the better-priced, very lucrative, beauty treats range).

Thankfully my DD is not into Zoella yet although I did pick up her book at a jumble sale DD is yet to read it but I suspect the price drop was already planned by Boots as part of the regular 'items at half-price' thing they do in the run up to Christmas every year.

I’ve worked in manufacturing and I can tell you the FIRST thoughts are what is the COST and what will be the RRP

then the item gets built around that.

I'm presuming that this is a licensing deal, like all of Boots' others? In which case, Zoella's input could have been quite minimal, with Boots creating and sourcing and manufacturing the product to Zoella Inc (whatever it's called) brand guidelines, and with them getting sign off.

But yes, she'd have approved the price point and the contents.

Exactly Wally - it would have started with - let's do an advent calendar, c. £50, with these sorts of gift and looking a bit like this. We need to make X% main, so that means we can spend about Y on packaging, Z on gift contents, and AA on distribution...

Not necessarily, Roomster. The wholesale price may have been dropped, with Boots agreeing to take the flak (in return for being allowed to continue being associated with the very lucrative brand - after all, Superdrug have the better-priced, very lucrative, beauty treats range).

I'm not convinced that they would agree to take the flak to continue being associated with her- they stand to lose more money than they make out of this if people decide Boots is a rip off and stop buying other things from there. I wouldn't be surprised if they always intended to half the price at some point, knowing that they could still make a profit.

X% margin

You may well be right, spottedzebra - but of course she can't admit that. The whole narrative is that she lovingly designed and chose every aspect of it herself. Admitting that it's just something Boots came up with and then slapped her name on completely destroys the appeal of the product.

If she cared about her fans she would haven't allowed it to be sell at such a price. She's lying she will have been told the pricing, people aren't just angry about the price it's the crappy contents also. She's filled the calendar full of tat and then priced it way too high.

She clearly is doing it for the money, maybe she realises that YouTube won't be forever and she needs to line her bank account now!

Oh yes, and the promotional strategy would be agreed upfront too, including placement in the gift guide, features in other ads, points offers, major price drops... Then other ad hoc opportunities may present themselves or be needed later in the the year

It’s going to be half price from tomorrow.

I missed the bit where you said skip to 33 so actually watched bits of the whole thing - bloody hell, what vacuous nonsense.

I would have had some respect for her if she'd held her hands up and said 'the price is set by the retailer but you're right, my name is on this and I have a responsibility to my fans to make sure that products being sold off the back of my name are not over-priced and exploitative'

Because she does have a responsibility, and shrugging her shoulders and placing the blame with Boots is just cowardly.

I think the truth is the worst of both cases! Her only involvement was a few minutes "work" pointing at what items she thought was cute and she approved the price.

If this was her first items in shops you could believe she had been used, but she's been doing this for years and is no novice.

She is in a sticky position. One one hand she is saying "oh I lovingly created this specially for yooouuuuuuu and it took me a year" but on what other she is trying to distance herself from the business side by claiming not to know about the financial aspect of it.

She can't have it both ways.

Can anyone explain to me why she's famous in the first place? I just don't see the appeal!!

My daughters are only 6 and 9 and so far their YouTube obsessions are, respectively, Cookie Swirl C and reborn dolls so thankfully we haven't got into the realm of YouTube 'personalities' yet - this is making me fear for the future. I hope Zoella's star has well and truly faded by the time my kids get to that point, although I suppose she'll be replaced by somebody equally irritating ...

All I can say is thank God I don't have girls that could be influenced by this crap! I've never seen one of her 'blogs' before and would be quite happy to never see one again. I watched the first few minutes where she said she was feeling so refreshed because she fell asleep before 10 the previous night and then a couple of minutes later with a full face of make up saying she felt awful because the dog had kept her awake all night. Why do people watch this shit?! Just to see all the freebies she's been sent? No wonder there's a whole generation growing up expecting something for nothing and no idea how to do a proper job.

If I'd bought it already for £50 I would now be wanting a £25 refund from Boots. It's not even worth that. Someone should have known that £50 puts it firmly in the 'luxury advent calendar' bracket. Reminds me of those Apprentice tasks where they try to sell 'artisan sandwiches' but have used value tuna flakes and value mayo..

June It's vacuous nonsense - but did anyone else think it was quite creepy nonsense?

It is obviously so very, very staged - all the business bits edited out, for a start - just like "In Bed With Madonna", where she puts her hand up and says: "No cameras here, this is business" - which is what the film was for, ultimately; marketing 'Brand Madonna'.

But, realising how old she is, it becomes quite strange to see a grown woman 'performing' this child-like, child-friendly persona.

She's in hot water for something else this morning - contentious tweets (since deleted) from 2010-2012

I had to stop watching at 3.24. What a lot of boring drivel. I'm aware of Zoella but have never seen her speak before or watched her on YouTube.

If the general thrust of her output is her putting on make up and making jugs if iced water in her hollow, echoey, bland house then I'm gobsmacked - it's dull as ditch water and the mind boggles that people will watch 35 minutes of it.

YouTube is a mystery to me. My son shows me clips now and then - mostly of shouty men and I want to claw my eyes out.

Can anyone explain to me why she's famous in the first place? I just don't see the appeal!!

Nor do I, but hundreds of thousands of teenagers do. That's why I find the YouTuber celebrities such a fascinating cultural phenomenon (unlike most people on these threads, I'm not the parents of teens, just someone who finds this whole thing both interesting and alarming!) - I feel like it's the first thing big trend in my life (I'm early 30s) where I don't just not like it myself, I feel a complete cultural disconnect from it - I'm basically too old, and have the wrong worldview to even imagine the appeal. It's also amazing (and Zoella is an exception to this - she probably qualifies as 'actually famous') how famous these YouTubers are in some ways, but how completely unaware the vast majority of the population is of their existence. It really feels to me like a new (and not that pleasant) form of entertainment has taken this huge hold without anyone much noticing.