Oh, honey. For the past year, Meghan Markle has been plagued by problems related to her jam company. First, she had to defend the name American Riviera Orchard. Then, there were rumors of staff turnover and a copyright issue with Harry & David. So she changed the name to As Ever, got prepared to launch her Netflix show, then had to push everything back after the Los Angeles wildfires. There was, however, a bright spot in all of this: Last week, Meghan (finally) released the As Ever product line, and it appeared to go off without a hitch. Except, apparently, it didn’t — the Meg heads were so excited about Meghan’s honey that she accidentally sold more jars than she had.
According to People, once As Ever went live last week, Meghan’s honey sold out in less than five minutes. The rest of the line sold out in under an hour, but it’s clear that people were especially amped for a $28 jar of Limited-Edition Wildflower Honey with Honeycomb, which was “inspired by Meghan’s own appreciation for the art of harvesting this natural delight at her family home in Montecito, California.” (Sorry to those of you who thought you were getting honey from Meghan’s own bees.) In fact, the people were too hype for the honey.
In an email, which someone screenshotted and shared to X, Meghan explained to customers that “due to overselling” some honey orders would not be able to be fulfilled. Customers were refunded and Meghan promised that they would be the first to receive the next limited-edition item from As Ever. “No need to order, it will come to you in the mail as a gift from me,” she wrote.
In a follow-up email, the As Ever team took over to explain a little more. “As you may have seen, the excitement created a volume of traffic on the site that even we couldn’t have anticipated,” they wrote. “The orders were happening so quickly that the backend of the site didn’t have a chance to keep up.” Not to business-shame anyone, but it seems like you should anticipate a high volume of traffic when one of the most famous women in the world releases the product line she’s been promising for a year?
As for Meghan, she’ll get ’em next time. Hopefully, when As Ever drops its summer collection (I’m guessing strawberry jam, cold-brew iced-tea packets, and shortcake mix), there will be no problems. If they really want things to go smoothly, they should consider hiring someone with experience running a high-volume online business. Maybe the person who handles Taylor Swift’s merch store is free? Or any Etsy seller who does bachelorette merch?
