Netflix deal, looking like it may be over for H&M

[Thedom]

The rumours have been doing the rounds for a while, but Puck News now reporting it, which means it is very likely that their contract with Netflix will not be renewed.

"The streamer is not expected to renew its five-year, $100 million deal signed in 2020 with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Meghan’s passion project, the animated kids show Pearl, has already been canceled, and the unscripted cooking and polo offerings didn’t connect the way the royal couple’s Harry & Meghan did. "

puck.news/the-best-and-worst-deals-of-peak-tv-part-1/

@LaMarschallin Perfect!

I know Friends is now seen as very unPC, but it ran to 10 seasons for a good reason. It was relatable. We all knew a fun Bobby in the 90s/early 2000s.

Edited because lots of horrible typos.

I remember that interview and wondering why H was being so rude to his db. I also wasn't too sure about W when he was younger. He seemed aloof but I think now that was shyness. He's relaxed and lot and actually seems charming and funny. He got the best of both his parents and his dgm.

There’s a lot of puff pieces out right now about meghan.

US weekly
Harpers Bazzar
NYT
People

So we know that WME is hard at work trying and get Meghan and her brand out there.

Repeated narrative seems to be as we have seen over the last few weeks:

1/ Meghan is over the Royal drama
and wants to live on and wants Harry to move on

2/ There’s constant reports in papers about a reconciliation

3/ The push for fashion Meghan. Her investments, her changes of clothes in Colombia

4/The push for lifestyle Meghan. We see her in the Hamptons and renewed talk about the launch of ARO which is supposed to be later this year.

BUT…..all this press….:all this PR work…..yet there aren’t talking about the film? The polo show? The cooking show?

If she launching ARO at the end of this year, why aren’t they putting out stuff about the cooking show. Eg, the title, the recipes, the guests. All this info could be leaked.

It makes me think that this push for press in ARO and her investments, is a distraction from what is going on at Netflix. Or the lack of what’s going on at Netflix.

Also, I think the article about meghan investing in a bag company- shows that ARO is just going to be a platform to sell other brands. That Meghan carefully ‘curates’

She said in the NYT article that she spends a lot of time looking for designers in other territories. Why? No one has that amount of time. She’s doing it to look for brands that she thinks no one else has got on their sites (to give her a USP) but also because she wouldn’t be able to get in certain brands because she is seen as a risk (love/hate nature of Meghans fame). So expect Clevr and Cesta Collection to be sold through ARO.

I also think that her share of these companies is bought through her promotion of them. I don’t think she has forked out any cash. She promotes and will put them on her site which she says will revive a lot of traffic.

So she launches her Instagram and she gets 600k followers. So she then says to brands- sell through me and sell through my site, look at the numbers I can get. That’s why there hasn’t been any products and no one has heard about any manufacturing. She touting for brands to sell through her platform by luring them in with the numbers and the press coverage she can get. I mean she got an NYT article about Cesta.

I don’t think the products sold on ARO will be from ARO- save from a few limited edition items of which there will be a big fanfare.

Meghan says she has invested in 10 brands. Expect these brands to be on the site.

But by the sounds of it, Netflix is over. Otherwise why on earth aren’t WME pushing the cooking show hard?

So the Times and the DM saying why no products yet when you had a soft launch in March….:

Because she needed to generate numbers so she could go along to small brands and show them that her platform will have large numbers and will give the example of when she launched her insta and got 600k followers.

Im guessing at that point she had very few brands. She had Clevr but thats it. Cesta has come along and she now has 8 other brands. I’m guessing that has been since March til now.

Her USP will be small brands supporting women blah blah. But she wouldn’t be able to get established brands right now. Also it pumps out the ol’ I’m a humanitarian aspect of the grift.

Would be interesting to know if she has invested in any brands that aren’t headed by white women. Seems strange that so far, no businesses owned by a woman/women of colour have been chosen by Meghan.

I agree with this. Both KC and William have grown on me and I think their aloofness was probably more shyness.

I feel like Catherine has really embraced QEII as a role model. She has also really grown on me.

The Cesta bags are woven in Rwanda. finished in Italy, marketed to an aspirational European/US lifestyle. But are apparently made for fair wages (if their website is to be believed).

@Twistybranch That makes sense that ARO would a site that brings together small brands as part of "quiet luxury" aspirational lifestyle brand. Not sure what the 8 other brands would be as coffee and bags don't have much in common.

Yes, everything is about how Meghan hasn’t got any investors but SHE is the investor. But it won’t cost her anything, because she gets a cut by promising a platform and PR. She will say she’s unparalleled in the amount of Press she gets. She says this in the NYT article, how what she wears has the power to sell out. Even referencing her just wearing an earring and how that’s the most powerful thing she can do.

She even says it in the NYT article that she’s a dolphin not a shark tank investor. This is how she will present to these women led brands, that it’s an exclusive curated site by meghan and basically they are lucky to be a chosen one.

Yes, all the products Meghan think are the quiet luxury lifestyle

I think other brands could be

-small jewellery brand
-homeopathy products

As of February 2024, according to a reddit post that is drawing from the NY courts system, American Express was suing Cesca for unpaid bills.

I'm no expert, but this sounds like a terrible business plan to me.

If I was interested in buying a Cesta handbag, why wouldn't I just buy it directly from the source? Why would I seek out a 'celebrity' lifestyle brand?

Also, getting a cut from the sale of midrange products isn't going to fund a Montecito lifestyle. Not even close. This is small-time influencer territory, and influencers are going out of style.

And if Meghan wants to be some sort of style icon, she needs to get out there and be seen. And I don't mean in silly faux royal 'tours' or phoning in interviews. She's going to have to be active on social media, do TV interviews and try to attend glamorous events where she can be seen with A listers. Nobody really cares about pretend royal tours in Nigeria or Colombia, or minor 'charity' events. Meghan does not have a marketable brand image, and that's essential for any sort of brand.

She’s going to have to do a lot more PR, you’re right. But it feels like that’s what she’s gearing up for. There’s a spate of puff pieces out and she hasn’t even launched yet.

I do the same, even if I see a nice product. If you then go to the actual brand site- you often get things like free delivery or some other perk.

Maybe that’s why Harry seems to have checked out. In the end, he married an influencer ….which is what she was when she met him but maybe he thought she would change.

I would agree it doesn't seem like a particularly brilliant business plan, but at least it's something.

I know we keep being told that Meghan's style is 'quiet luxury', but I'm not sure. She looks a bit scruffy a lot of the time and her outfits don't seek coherent.

I'm also a bit dubious that everything she wears sells out. When she wore the nekkid dress in Nigeria, stans were gloating over how it had sold out overnight except it was last season's colour so of course it was sold out.

Edited because this post is almost as much of a hot mess as Meghan's wardrobe.

Good point. She's back where she started as an influencer. Her platform is bigger but ARO is The Tig 2.0.

@JADS

yes, completely over exaggerating her power to sell out items she’s worn. But that’s part of the business plan to lure brands in, pretending she has that much power.

The only brand she had any impact on was Strathberry years ago. She was still touting that in the NYT article. Why hasn’t brand she’s worn since then sold out. That was when she was still a working royal.

Shows you, what she wears now doesn’t sell out, otherwise this would have been listed as an example of her power.

Fair enough, she gave princessing a go and it didn't meet her expectations.

But if she is back to The Tig she will need to scale back her lifestyle to those days as well.

You only have to look at the fairly obscure brands she's touting to know that she's not a hot property in the fashion world.

It's quite clear that no established prestige brands want to be associated with her.

Yes she’s too much of a risk for the luxury brands

Her only power is over the small brands who are desperate for exposure. So can easily exploit

Don't the people, mostly women, making clothes for high street brands in China and Vietnam also get above average wages for those countries?

At the end of the day, these are products being made at very low cost in a very low income country, before being sold for hundreds of quid a pop. So the big money goes to the American women, not the Rwandan women.

As for 'finished in Italy' weren't a few designer factories raided in Italy a few months ago, revealing horrible conditions for the workers?

@IcedPurple Yes to everything you say. It is easy to give a "generous" wage to women in developing countries when the bar is set so low in the first place.

Cesta say they pay the female artisans in Rwanda 500-700% the national average wage, which is likely to be low to begin with - if I am right, they are using traditional basket weaving skills to create the body of the bags using raffia, and although their work is very beautiful and skilled in the traditional sense, I don't think it is counted as "skilled" in the educational sense for employment purposes, so I doubt it attracts anything more than minimum average wages locally (and that's before you take on board the gender pay gap in Rwanda, which is large across all sectors).

And I agree, "finished in Italy" is not synonymous with being finished by people working in decent conditions and being paid well. They are finished in Sicily, one of Italy's poorest regions, so wages are likely lower. Cesta talk a good talk about empowerment and ethics on their website, but I guess you need to look behind the word salad on their website (Meghan could have written it) to see the real picture and whether they are truly ethical - and that I don't know. I believe the little bag Meghan carried in Colombia retails at $750.

I think saying the bags were made by a 'women's cooperative in Rwanda' is somehow 'sexier' than saying they were made in China or the Philippines. But at the end of the day, this is an expensive product being made with very cheap labour, and the women doing the bulk of the work will only receive a pittance.

Personally, I think the bags are ugly and massively overpriced.

Have to say I love Strathberry and have a few of their bags.

People have been saying something is afoot with Harry making a discreet visit while Meghan is putting out her puff pieces in the US

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13800335/Duke-Sussex-Harry-asked-former-aides-help.html

What are we to make of all this obvious leaking to the Press? Harry is tired of his life in the US and is seeking a way to come back in some capacity whilst remaining in the US ? It’s utterly bizarre. How could that possibly work ? The British public would never stand for it even if his father were to agree.

That is one weird article.

The Daily Mail, no less, pushing a story slanted favourably towards Harry, the gist of which is that Harry is again pushing for half-in, half-out.

Or is there a divorce looming?

There’s been a bit of press recently about Harry being miserable and he looked it on the Colombia tour…alongside his wife who is now a full time influencer. He must be cringing.

Im guessing he’s overwhelmed, looks like they’ve got rid of another aMercian adviser and he’s looking for British advisers.

I always thought he would struggle with Americans, because they know better than to act with deference and actually treat him like a normal person. That’s why I think he seeks British advice, so they know bow before they speak!

I think there’s definitely something going on between meghan and Harry that isn’t good news.

I mean she threw him under the bus a few weeks ago when they leaked she wants him to move on from the court cases etc. He looked miserable on the latest tour, all her work is focused on her businesses, whereas his is focused solely on charity. They are slowly drifting.

It’s too much for someone with poor MH to expect to be successful in another country/ culture, estranged from everyone and everything you know. I think he’s finally admitting it.