Months after the first release sold out within an hour, Meghan Markle has dropped the second collection of products in her Netflix-backed lifestyle range, As Ever.
Along with restocking “the products you love,” like the infamous flower confetti and raspberry spread, Meghan teased the new launch in her newsletter as “full of delicious surprises.”
Turns out, by that she meant a new apricot spread in “keepsake packaging,” and a limited edition orange blossom honey, both of which sold out within the first 10 minutes of the collection going live on Friday morning. There’s also a “Napa Valley rosé” billed as coming later this summer. As of an hour and 20 minutes after launch, only these products were still in stock: the cookie mix, the crepe mix and the flower confetti, all restocks from the first drop.
Posting on her Stories about an hour after the launch — seemingly from her Montecito garden — Meghan expressed disbelief at how quickly the products were selling. “We spent so much time making sure we had so much more inventory,” she said. “And you guys are doing it again. We’re nearly selling out of everything.” She added that, knowing flower sprinkles had been a top-seller the first time, they’d stocked it, so it “has more inventory than all of it, and that’s also about to sell out.”
The real surprise, however, is that As Ever is releasing a fresh batch of products at all. That’s because just a few weeks ago, Meghan told Fast Company that while it would have been “easiest to endlessly restock,” her plan was to “step back, gather data from the launch and figure out exactly what As Ever could be.” New products, according to that article, would only be coming early next year.
Still, something else she said in that piece shed some light on the products we see in this summer drop. “I want to really focus on the hospitality angle of As Ever,” she said, “but as we take the learnings, we can understand what the customer’s needs are seasonally.”
The data, it seems, led her straight to a new flavour of her signature preserve and getting into the booze space, the latter not surprising given that this is the same woman who named her blog after a wine.
It also may not be coincidental that the second season of her Netflix show, ”With Love, Meghan,” is coming sometime this summer, having been filmed at the same time as the episodes released earlier this year.
The streaming service is Meghan’s “partner” in the As Ever line, having approached her at the same time she says she was building her own in-house team to launch a business. Along with financial backing, the company works with her to produce the things she sells. “The brand is in the same universe at (sic) the show, but they’re not the same,” Meghan told Fast Company of the arrangement.
This newest launch comes amid a busy time for the Duchess of Sussex in the public eye. Earlier this week, she appeared on Good American CEO Emma Grede’s “Aspire” podcast, talking about her “founder journey,” although the big headline was around how she answered a question about what she would do differently if she could rewrite her public narrative.
“I would ask people to tell the truth,” Meghan said. Grede then followed up by asking if she ever got frustrated with people “telling lies” about her, to which she responded. “Peaks and valleys. I’ve gone through those chapters and done a lot of self-work to ask, ‘What’s the why?’ It’s happening for a reason.” She quotes Serena Williams who told her, “A lie can’t live forever. But eight years is a long time!”
She’s also been active on her 3.8 million follower–strong Instagram account, sharing content that wouldn’t raise eyebrows — a wedding anniversary post, a tribute to her husband on Father’s Day, pictures of a family trip to Disney — if she were anyone else. Marking her daughter’s birthday, she had a viral moment when she shared her and Prince Harry doing the “baby mama” dance in hospital trying to kick-start her labour. Predictably, it was met with pearl clutching and/or delight, depending on which corner of the internet you found yourself in.
“By the way, that wasn’t yesterday. It was four years ago,” she told Grede about the video, which came up as they were discussing the importance of authenticity. “It’s a reminder that with all the noise, there’s a whole real, authentic, fun life that’s happening behind the scenes. I’m just grateful that now, being back on social as well, I have a place where I can share it on my own terms.”
Her new podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder,” just wrapped its first season, although Meghan says she currently has no plans for a second because she wants to focus on her As Ever business.
As she told Grede: “The only thing I want spread thin is my jam.”
With or without optional keepsake packaging.
