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Meghan Markle’s As Ever Brand Faces Inventory-Visitor Disparity Amid Growing Scrutiny

6/9/2026, 11:38:48 PM

Inventory Glitch Exposes Stock vs. Visitor Gap

In early January 2025 a design flaw on the As Ever website (asever.com) allowed users to add unlimited quantities of each product to their carts. The system automatically capped the quantity at the maximum available stock, unintentionally displaying the full inventory: 650,190 units valued at roughly $21.8 million at list price. The leak provided the first concrete view of the brand’s supply side.

Launch and Media Tie-Ins

Meghan Markle introduced As Ever in 2025, positioning it as a lifestyle brand that dovetailed with her Netflix cooking-and-crafting series With Love, Meghan. Netflix took an equity stake and the brand debuted alongside the show’s first season. Earlier, the Sussexes had pursued a Netflix biopic, *Harry & Meghan*, and a Spotify partnership, both of which ended by 2025. The brand’s public narrative has been framed as a post-royal reinvention, with the expectation that the television platform would drive consumer demand.

Numbers Reveal Inventory-Visitor Mismatch

  • Inventory breakdown (January): 80,000 tubs of edible-flower sprinkles (~$1.2 M), ~90,000 candles (~$5.7 M), remaining items—including raspberry jam—accounted for the rest of the $21.8 M valuation.
  • U.S. traffic (Jan-May 2025): 392,114 visitors, far below the 650,000+ inventory units. Total global visits topped 1 million, with Britain, Canada, Australia and India contributing significant shares.
  • Engagement: Monthly bounce rates ranged from 34 % to 40 %. Across the five-month span, 382,000 visitors viewed only a single page, while 675,000 explored multiple pages. Because As Ever ships exclusively within the United States, international visitors likely left without purchasing.
  • Conversion uncertainty: No sales figures have been released, and the data do not reveal how many visitors bought multiple items, leaving the true sell-through rate unknown.

Official Response from As Ever

A source close to the brand asserted that the holiday period “exceeded everybody’s expectations” and described the overall performance as “incredibly successful.” The same source criticized media coverage for “painting a negative narrative” and urged audiences to interpret data “with the whole picture” in mind.

Critics Question Unsold Stock

Opponents argue that the disclosed inventory far outstrips demonstrated demand, suggesting a looming surplus. One commentator described a “prejudice” that fuels a narrative of failure, claiming that the brand’s visibility is “clouded by… a need to perpetuate a narrative that her business is a failure.”

Conflicting Data and Unanswered Questions

  • Sales data: No official sales numbers have been published, preventing verification of inventory depletion.
  • Regional bounce rates: The lack of a U.S.–specific bounce-rate metric obscures how many American visitors abandoned the site after a single page.
  • Perishability: While some items (e.g., jam) are perishable, others such as candles are not, complicating assessments of inventory urgency.

Verbatim Quotes

  • “By any measure, for any startup, you can’t deny that is anything but a success.” — Anonymous source, As Ever insider
  • “It's [As Ever has] exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of how well it's gone, I would say, across the holiday period. That period has been incredibly successful.” — Anonymous source, As Ever insider

Future Outlook

In March 2026 Netflix withdrew its equity stake, ending a year-long partnership. Web traffic has softened, mirroring a dip in Meghan’s U.S. popularity. Without transparent sales data, the brand’s ability to convert its sizable inventory into sustained revenue remains uncertain, placing the Sussexes under continued pressure to demonstrate private-sector viability independent of their royal legacy.