Last week at this time we were talking about photos of Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of Marty Supreme, making out with Timothée Chalamet. This week the photos of Gwyneth have been all Goop-based as she’s been seen on a couple of occasions shooting ads for her brand – a selection of those shots is attached. The pictures are timely because there’s some gossip about Goop. 

 

Puck published a piece yesterday, reported by Rachel Strugatz, about the ups and downs of Gwyneth’s business. On the upside, Goop’s food vertical is doing well with “60 percent year over year revenue growth YTD”. The fashion and beauty sides of the business, however, are not seeing the same results. 

 

Which may be one of the reasons that around 40 Goop employees were laid off in September, including Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Johnston, which continues the trend of “Goop’s longstanding struggle to install more seasoned executives around Paltrow, or to implement a more coherent strategy...”

You know how the British tabloids and the haters are constantly screaming about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and how much staff turnover there’s been at their foundation? That’s nothing compared to Goop’s revolving door of executives and they’ve just let go of dozens of staff members but none of that seems to making much noise, until now that Puck is sniffing around it. 

Puck, however, operates on a subscription model and this article was behind a paywall so I’m not sure how wide this story is going to carry, although Puck is read by industry insiders so it’s not really a great look for Goop to have their blemishes put on blast like this. 

 

Rachel Strugatz has numbers to back up her reporting, and insider source quotes about how Goop has dropped the ball, particularly in the beauty vertical and, apparently, Gwyneth already wasn’t happy that Rachel had previously broken the story back in the summer that her affordable skincare line, Good.clean.goop, wasn’t doing all that well at Target. This new article is critical but with receipts and even a little snarky. When Good.clean.goop did not perform as expected, Rachel writes:

“Apparently, no one at Goop had modeled for an outcome where the line didn’t succeed. “After it came out and sales were terrible, there was a meeting about figuring out how to make this work. It was a scramble because Target was pissed,” said a former employee. “They thought they were going to launch it, and it was just going to take off.” Naturally, Goop didn’t think additional marketing would be required, and that the line could simply rely on Paltrow’s name, the retailer’s huge door count, and foot traffic to make the big numbers the brand needed.”

It's the “naturally” before “Goop didn’t think additional marketing would be required”, LOL, and this I think speaks to Gwyneth’s reputation for being… well… Gwyneth. It’s the confidence of privilege, or in this case the OVER-confidence of privilege. Like why would we have to try that hard, it’s Gwyneth and Goop, everyone should be rushing to buy. Even if she might not believe in the products herself.

 

Because that’s what Rachel is getting from some of her sources:

“It would get really hard to get behind some of the products, because we would know that Gwyneth didn’t really care about them,” said a former employee who was among the recent wave of layoffs. “She wasn’t crazy about the lip glosses that just launched,” this person added, recalling that Paltrow’s disdain for certain products was openly discussed in meetings. (A Goop spokesperson said that Paltrow is “deeply involved in the development and creation of every beauty product that we bring to market. We do not release products that she does not stand behind.”)

If there’s one thing the marketplace won’t bear, it’s disbelief. The disbelief here goes two ways. Allegedly Gwyneth doesn’t believe in her own products and the public, it seems, is having a hard time believing that she believes in it too. That’s one of the biggest problems a business can ever encounter. 

 

How will Gwyneth and Goop overcome this? Will she actually have to try harder? I’m not talking about work ethic, I’m talking about … being a try-hard, a pick-me girl, obsequiousness. Will Gwyneth Paltrow actually be compelled to ingratiate herself to us?