As Never the second release ...

[onehorserace]

Wine, apricot spread and honey. I think we've had all the suggestions for names already ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14832085/amp/Meghan-Markle-new-products-rose-wine-apricot-spread.html

Someone on the other thread said that based on invoice numbers they were up to 20,000 or something. So even if you assumed that everyone ordered every product (which they won’t have done), it can’t have been more than 20,000 units per product across both “drops”.

No chance then that this wasn’t intended to be another super fast sell out - in fact I suspect it taking ~4 hours and Meghan having to do a post 2 hours in telling everyone “quick quick it’s selling so much faster than I thought” is an indication in fact demand was slower this time than they thought it would be.

Meghan having to do a post 2 hours in telling everyone “quick quick it’s selling so much faster than I thought”

Bit QVC, isn't it?

I assume that is ironic?

This. There is literally nothing that Meghan could do to please the people who give their energy to deriding her every move. If she did nothing, she'd be a sponger. But anything she DOES do is pored over here, and criticised so harshly every time.
I don't particularly care for them more than I care for anyone I don't know. But the vitriol reserved for Meghan on here is telling I think- not one member of the Royal family ever gets as much flack.

It's not vitriol. She's a very controversial public figure who is doing her utmost to keep her status and make a lot of money.
Yes, other members of the RF get criticised, just look at some of the threads on Kate and William.
She's not some innocent victim of the media. She's a canny, middle aged woman, used to hustling, who is trying to cash in while she can.

With the exception of Andrew ( and I think we are 💯 in agreement that he is an obnoxious arse) no one else has behaved as badly as H and M . For Meghan to be so traumatised by her experience of being a member of the RF for a blink- and- you- miss-it time , she sure does cling on to the title not just for herself but her DC .
If she would drop the title , I think she would gain a tiny bit of respect.

It’s the lying and hypocrisy that I can’t stand. As well as the greed which is just off the scale.

good grief, do people stalk her to find stuff to slate.

I think it’s more a case of just disbelief and fascination with someone who seems to have no moral compass and no judgement whatsoever.

It's been pointed out that she shows her phone in that post, and she recorded it at around 8.40am-ish. So she was telling the podcasts she was worried about her products selling out fast and disappointing customers (claiming this is why she wouldn't be restocking until 2026, and yet she did), whilst at the same time jumping to promote the one item not selling (the sprinkles) only 40 minutes after they went up for sale because what - she wants to be able to say it was an under 40 minutes sell out again? And thus, more disappointed customers. I just don't understand what her marketing strategy is at all.

My guess is that with all the fancy packaging, the products are difficult and very expensive to produce. The last thing you want is a bunch of expensive stock that isn’t shifting so it’s likely they order in small quantities and then sell out within a day, believing this will somehow push up their market value.

Interestingly, although there’s a lot of online chatter about the brand, there doesn’t appear to be any serious effort to advertise/promote the products. I’ve had a look and can’t see any product specific ads on social media (and I used a VPN to check in the US too). There is a lot on promoting ‘Meghan’ as a brand though.

I can’t see, with the fancy pants boxes and packaging, not to mention all the marketing/photography how there’s much margin in this. Unless you’re shifting lorry loads of stuff and flooding the ‘Waitrose shopper’ market, I don’t see how it can be a viable business. So I wonder if this is less about jam and more about ‘Meghan - the brand’.

To be fair, the King makes money out of selling jam, too!

No doubt that’s where she got the idea.

the proceeds are donated to charity and what Meghan sells just cannot be compared to the Duchy products which are long established and a different class altogether to hers.

I’m not sure the packaging is that fancy though, is it? With the possible exception of the jam in the “presentation” box but even so.

But I do agree they obviously don’t believe there’s sustained demand or they would have a different sort of production system.

Are they spending money on marketing at all? As far as I can tell there’s no need to - what’s the point if you don’t have products to sell, and what you put on sale sells out within a few hours with some light touch social promotion?

obviously her money is going into PR (PRing herself, with the business as a backdrop to that) but I haven’t seen any examples of paid marketing and indeed it would seem to be wasted money to me until there’s actually something to build.

‘Fancy’ is probably an overstatement but they describe the jam/spread as coming in a ‘keepsake box’ and from what I can see, the other products are in nice tins with decent quality labelling etc. It defo can’t be cheap and I agree, if it was a serious business venture, they’d have a much better production line plus proper marketing and not just PR.

To me it feels like a business which is willing to pay extra for packaging in the short term because they know this is not the long term strategy/business. It’s not worth the bother to negotiate for longer terms contracts because they’re building an ‘entrepreneur/influencer’ brand around Meghan.

I nerd out on watching this type of thing and trying to work out what the goal is. 🤓

She’s a public figure pushing herself forward via Instagram, podcasts (her own, and others’), public appearances, televised events, her own documentaries and lifestyle programmes, a book, Harry’s book, television interviews, and online sales promotions.

And she says she’s loving it all.

Observers of her very public brand are entitled to offer critique. It comes with the territory when you are trying to turn a profit out of your very public brand.

'not one member of the Royal family ever gets as much flack.'

A joke, surely? Do you remember the Where's Kate frenzy? All of the other senior members of the rf are on the receiving end of a lot of absolutely awful commentary. In Kate's case, particularly undeserved.

ETA if people stopped talking about Meghan her raison d'etre would disappear.

Its the persistent and consistent bullying of staff and subordinates that does it for me and her attempts to be two faced and 'nice' when she has caused mental injury and personal distress to any people just doing their job.

Yes, I buy Duchy products sometimes like marmalade because they are organic, easily available in my local Waitrose shop, clearly provenanced, the profits go to charity and they are extremely good quality.

And I’m a mild-mannered republican! The shame …

😁

Just without the price drops

Also, M is getting the piss ripped out of her in the US now. Bigly. There seems little acknowledgment of this from the M-fanbase.

I wonder if Harold's new best friend the DM will manage to get hold of all the items and review them like they did last time?

The point about almost all of the promotion being about Meghan the brand, not As Ever the brand (or its products) is astute. It’s look at me, not look at this.

Hardly vitriolic. People are just taking the piss about someone selling random overpriced shite. It's one step above the Facebook tat sellers.