Report: Launch date for Meghan Markle’s lifestyle brand finally announced

We finally know more details about when Meghan Markle’s lifestyle brand will officially launch.

The 42-year-old Duchess of Sussex announced her new lifestyle company, American Riviera Orchard, back in March, without providing any information on when her goods would be available for public sale.

But now a new report suggests that Markle’s lifestyle line will officially launch later this year. Although no exact date has been announced, a source told People that the former Suits star has been “working diligently behind the scenes to prepare.”

As for rumors that the launch was delayed because Markle allegedly had difficulty finding a CEO for American Riviera Orchard and reports of high staff turnover – the Sussexes have lost at least six employees since moving from the UK to the US, including Josh Kettler, her and her husband Prince Harry’s chief of staff, who recently resigned after just three months in the job – the insider stressed that such claims are untrue.

American Riviera Orchard, named at least in part after Meghan and Harry’s adopted home of Montecito on the Santa Barbara coast, also known as the “American Riviera,” will sell tableware, drinkware, kitchen textiles, jellies, jams, marmalades, spreads, cookbooks and other products, according to a trademark application filed by Markle’s lawyers.

The Duchess has previously worked in the lifestyle space, creating the lifestyle blog The Tig (named after her favourite wine) in 2014. She closed the website in 2017 after she became engaged to Prince Harry.

Since leaving her positions as a senior working member of the royal family in January 2020, Markle has tried her hand at a number of business ventures, focusing on brands that she personally enjoys and whose values ​​align with her own.

“I spend a lot of time just Googling and looking for brands,” Meghan told the New York Times in an interview after her recent quasi-royal tour of Colombia.

“When people search for things online or read things, I try to find great new designers, especially in different areas,” she explained.

The California native went on to say she began to believe her support of lifestyle brands could have a positive impact when a bag from Scottish company Strathberry, which she carried on an official outing with Prince Harry in 2017, sold out online in 11 minutes.

Strathberry’s increase in sales has reportedly helped the brand expand its workforce.

That moment “changed everything about how I viewed putting together an outfit at the time,” Markle said.

“When I know the world is in the spotlight and every detail of what I wear or don’t wear is getting attention, I support designers that I have really good friendships with and smaller, up-and-coming brands that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve,” she added. “That’s one of the most impactful things I can do, and that’s simply wearing earrings.”

The Duchess recently invested in a brand called Cesta Collective, which sells bags handwoven by a group of women in Rwanda and then finished in Italy.

“Investing in them helped prepare me for this chapter of investing in myself,” she said of her minority stake in the company.

She described her work in venture capital as more of a “dolphin tank” than a “shark tank.”

“These are friendly waters,” she said.