The Mail’s Alison Boshoff is at it again. Boshoff loves a melodramatic exclusive about the Duchess of Sussex, especially when it’s something completely unhinged about Meghan’s As Ever. This new exclusive is absolutely hilarious though: “Meghan’s £3.7m jamaggedon: New crisis facing Duchess as insiders tell ALISON BOSHOFF how she’s been ditched by major partner… and why it could spell the end of her ambitions…” Wait until you find out what the “jamaggedon” is. Actually, I can’t wait to tell you: Boshoff’s multipage rant about Meghan is completely based on the expiration dates of As Ever jam. Don’t you understand?? It will be “jamaggedon” because As Ever jam expires in… the late summer of 2027.
A looming crisis, by god: Yet behind the PR-approved images, a looming crisis brews –one which rather belies her image as a global power player. And it relates to something dazzlingly ordinary: the best-before dates on her much-vaunted range of jam. Because the Duchess is facing a serious problem for anyone in food retail: how to shift your stock before it goes off. For I can reveal that all of Meghan’s jams, teas and tins of flower sprinkles are set to go pretty much simultaneously out of date at the end of next summer. To put it bluntly, our analysis of her recent sales figures indicates that there’s more chance of King Charles taking a swim in a pool of her homemade conserve than her selling all her stock in time.
Meghan will lose money, we swear!! It may seem prosaic but, astonishingly, this jam jar-mageddon could see Meghan’s lifestyle brand, As Ever, face losses of more than $5million (£3.7million) – on her jams alone. Those rapidly expiring tins of flower sprinkles could also cost a cool million. What makes matters worse is last year, Meghan made a fateful decision to bet the house on a rapid expansion of her range, steeply hiking production – only for sales to then seemingly plummet.
Rumors of As Ever’s demise!! The number of customers to the As Ever website has reportedly dropped to such an extent that some are now openly speculating that the brand is on its way out. This week the respected magazine Newsweek tracked a fall in visitors to the website by 33 per cent between January and April, which it says corresponds to a drop in Meghan’s personal popularity over the same period.
No crepe mix restock?? It’s perhaps now clear why Meghan has never restocked her cake and crepe mixes (which have a shelf-life of only six months), and why she has launched new iterations of candles, which last forever. Commercial jams, though, have a shelf life of not more than two years, ditto herbal teas. It adds up to the picture of a brutal reckoning of expired goodies. All of which makes Netflix’s decision to sever ties with Meghan’s brand in March this year look even more like good business sense.
They went to Godmothers bookstore to check the expiration dates themselves: Significantly, Meghan’s representatives do not demur at the idea that much of her inventory will be unsellable from the end of next summer because it will have expired. Meanwhile, a visit to the Godmother’s book store in Montecito, which is still the only physical retail store stocking her products, confirms that the teas and sprinkles are indeed all going out of date at a point between June and September 2027.
Meghan is no longer paying a consultant!! Meanwhile, it can be revealed that Meghan’s relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand guru Devin Pedzwater is also over. He was hired on a small consultancy fee last summer.
I double-checked the crepe thing and it’s true, there are no crepe mixes or shortbread mixes currently for sale on As Ever’s site. You know why? Because they sold out. Because they were really popular. If she brought back the crepe mixes and shortbread mixes, they would sell out quickly yet again, expiration dates be damned. The jams are really popular too, which is why Meghan finally worked out her supply line and now people can just… order her products like a regular, functioning brand, without worrying about getting into the site in the first few minutes of a product drop because everything is about to sell out. Meghan wasn’t even trying to go for the scarcity model, she genuinely had no idea that there was going to be so much interest in her products. Now that she understands the interest, she’s keeping As Ever well-stocked with its signature products. Anyway, I laughed my ass off when I got to the big reveal: expiration dates! Meanwhile, the Mail is missing the REAL jamaggedon: the sold-out apricot jam. She keeps the fakakta orange marmalade in stock, meanwhile the people demand APRICOT!! And chocolate bars! And bookmarks!
Photos courtesy of As Ever’s site and Instagram.
