Who could have saved the Middletons' Party Pieces from disaster? A well

Release time：2024-05-01 01:23:34 Source：Global Grounds news portal

Still reeling from the failure of their Party Pieces mail order business, which collapsed into administration with debts of £2.6 million earlier this year, these are trying times for Michael and Carole Middleton.

The creditors were understandably upset. The firm's landlord was owed more than £57,000, according to official papers while HMRC was owed £600,000.

Then the Middletons were targeted by a malicious poster campaign complaining about the collapse.

The Princess of Wales, 41, pictured on a visit to Cardiff this year

Carole Middleton pictured in New Jersey as she launched Party Pieces in America last year

Leaflets and messages appeared on lamp posts and trees around the couple's home village of Bucklebury in Berkshire, where they have lived for several decades.

It was reported that Michael and Carole's youngest, James Middleton, whose wife Alizee has recently birth to baby Inigo, has been seen tearing the posters down. 

Quite what went wrong with Party Pieces, a business most assumed to be in fine fettle, remains unclear, although the effect of the Covid shut down and the sharp inflation that followed have been cited as factors.

But the Middletons could perhaps be forgiven for wondering what might have been had circumstances been different - and a little less regal.

Because according to Robert Lacey's best-selling Battle of Brothers, eldest child Catherine had 'shrewd eye for profit and a very hard head on her shoulders' that could have taken the firm into 'another dimension'.

The author writes that all three of the Middleton children, Catherine, Pippa and James, were involved with the company from its kitchen counter days, modelling for pictures in the pamphlets their parents were sending out.

Catherine, in particular, seemed to understand how it all worked and what was needed.

'As Kate grew older, she styled images and helped to develop the business, showing a head for negotiation to match her mother.

'"Catherine had all the makings of a fantastic trader," says a business person who has... seen her operate at first hand.

'"She's got a shrewd eye for profit and a very hard head on her shoulders.

'After university, she worked with Party Pieces and I am quite sure she would have taken the business into a new dimension if she had stayed - very much in her mother's style."'

This, as we now know, was not to be. 

The book cites a notably tart description of Carole Middleton's hard-headed trading style, which might make the collapse of her company seem all the more surprising.

'After a year or so, Mike left his job at British Airways in order to help grow the business,' writes Lacey. 'Carole Middleton's haggling skills became legendary in the direct-mail business.

"Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth most of the time, but she was a ferocious negotiator," recalls one of her suppliers. 

"I remember her almost screaming down the phone on one occasion when I refused to drop my price on something. People could hear her on the other side of the office — and that was in my office with her voice coming through the phone from Bucklebury, or wherever."

The business began in 1987, soon after the Middleton family returned to the United Kingdom after living in Amman in Jordan from the early 80s, when Kate was just two years old. 

Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following the Coronation of King Charles III

Carole and Michael Middleton attend the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in July 2022

It was launched when Carole was pregnant with their son James and looking for some fun paper plates for Kate's fifth birthday. Surprised by the lack of options, she decided that she could do better.

Carole, brought up in a council flat and later a small terrace house in Southall, West London, left school at 16 and worked for the Prudential insurance company before getting a job as ground staff for British Airways at Heathrow.

There, she met Michael Middleton, a flight dispatcher who is six years her senior. His family were wealthy and he had been privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol.

They tied the knot in June 1980 and in the first years of the marriage they moved to Amman in Jordan, where Michael worked.

However, Carole wasn't sure she was cut out to be an expat mum to her two daughters, so they returned to the UK in 1986 - and it was a year later that Carole launched her 'kitchen-table business' Party Pieces.

At first, she was simply preparing party bags for the parents of her daughters' school friends, but over time the business grew sufficiently to take over a shed in their garden and eventually to require its own premises.

The key change was the advent of online shopping in the 1990s. Michael Middleton gave up his job to get involved as it took off. 

At the time of their daughter's wedding to Prince William, Party Pieces was said to be worth £30 million.

The current version of company was established in 2019, with Carole as a brand ambassador and she and her husband Michael as the majority shareholders. 

An attempt to expand into America was launched last year. 

But by June, the company owed £218,749 to RBS  for a Coronavirus Business Interruption loan, £456,008 to other creditors and £1.4 million in unsecured loans, a statement published by administrators revealed .

At first, Carole was simply preparing party bags for the parents of her daughters' school friends, but over time the business became strong enough for Michael Middleton to leave his airline job and join his wife

Among other things, the Middletons pointed to lockdown and the cost of living crisis which caused a sharp downturn in sales and cash flow problems for their business.

Party Pieces has been sold in part to Teddy Tastic Bear Company Limited for £180,000, the document says, with the firm keeping on 12 employees and remaining at its current base in Ashampstead, Berkshire.

Friends of the Middletons revealed earlier this year that Carole, 68, and Michael, 74, were planning to step away from the firm and retire, in hopes of spending more time with their six - and counting - grandchildren.

It seems the opportunity has come sooner than they expected. 

Related articles