Carole Middleton conquers America with birthday decorations
The mother of the future queen consort Carole Middleton has closed a mega deal for her Party Pieces in the USA. Even if the shadows on the turnover and the company’s real success still need to unravel.
On January 9, 1987, the fifth birthday of Kate Middleton — now Princess of Wales and future Queen consort of England — her mother Carole Middleton had a brilliant idea that would later change the fortunes of the entire family: to open a dedicated company to decorations for the parties of adults and children, to expand a sector that, at least in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s, was decidedly monothematic and not very creative.
The business, which would later take the name of Party Pieces, literally kicked off on the dining table of the Middletons, who then, as now, lived in Berkshire, and initially expanded by word of mouth among the parents of schoolmates from the school. Little Kate.
Carole Middleton’s birthday party preparations
Carole Middleton and her husband Michael started producing props for birthday parties and special occasions directly, supported by some trusted suppliers.
The rest — the success of Party Pieces, which later became one of the first e-commerce stores to sell decorations online in the UK — is history.
With the proceeds of that fortuitous intuition of Carole Middleton, a former British Airways stewardess, the Middleton family has managed to position themselves, over the years, on the top step of a rising society entirely in the hands of the new bourgeois of England.
Thanks to a turnover of millions of pounds, the parents of the Princess of Wales were then able to ensure that Kate and the brothers Pippa and James entered the best schools and, in the case of the two older girls, also in elite social circles.
Of the English countryside and London, where, in the early 2000s, they were undisputed queens (and were called, in a not very nice way, ” Sisters Glicine “).
Today Carole Middleton‘s Party Pieces, who still proudly heads the company 30 years later, has landed in the United States.
With a post on Instagram, Kate’s mom announced that pieces from her new collection would be on sale in the New Jersey Saker ShopRites chain and online.
A milestone that marks the entry of the Middleton family on American soil, a few days after the publication of an article in the Daily Mail in which it was revealed that the company is no longer as healthy as it once was, even if the value of the company is attested in 40 million pounds.
The pandemic, the social limitations, and the impossibility of organizing birthday parties in recent years would have involved, for the Party Pieces, huge losses at the turn of 2020 and 2021, about 1.5 million euros.
Although the family fortune is not threatened by the current economic crisis, Carole Middleton and Michael Middleton may have to review their internal organization and spending budgets soon to meet costs.
It is not known how the marriage of his daughter Kate, who met Prince William at St Andrews University in Scotland(a prestigious university that the future queen consort was able to attend also due to the success of the family business), has influenced the success and finances of Party Pieces, but, as Carole Middleton herself told the Mail in 2021, indeed her eldest daughter with younger brothers Pippa and James inspired her work from the beginning “and the success we have had has allowed us to build the life we have today.”
Since September 2022, the family of the Princes of Wales has lived in Windsor, in Adelaide Cottage, a few miles from Bucklebury Manor, the mansion that the Middletons bought as soon as the Party Pieces earnings became substantial (along with several other properties scattered throughout the UK, not least the apartment in which Kate and Pippa lived in the early 2000s in London).
The relationship between Kate and William’s children and their maternal grandparents is solid: George, Charlotte, and Louis spend a lot of time with Carole, now 67, and Michael, 74, and with their cousins Arthur, Grace, and Rose, the latter born in 2022 and third daughter of Pippa and her husband, James Matthews.
Uncle James, who married the French financial analyst Alizée Thevenet in 2021, also lives nearby: behind closed doors, the Middletons are still the great (and very united) clan that, thanks to their great understanding and mutual help, he created a company from scratch that changed the lives of all members of the family.
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