Is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Empire in Trouble?

For the past 16 years, Goop has been one of the shining lights in the celebrity business sphere. Gwyneth Paltrow’s woo-woo wellness company has endured a lot of jokes (and extremely legitimate criticism about its suspect claims and the people it supports), but it’s remained a major hit. In 2018, the New York Times reported that Goop was worth an estimated $250 million, thanks to its unusual wellness offerings like psychic vampire repellent and jade vagina eggs. Not bad for what started out as a newsletter by a bored actress. But now, reports are suggesting that Goop is stumbling.

Last year, Goop opened a store in London, which closed quickly due to lack of interest. RadarOnline is claiming that closure led to around a $2 million loss for the company. Last week, Business Insider reported that Goop had undergone a second round of layoffs in only two months. In 2021, they also reported that 140 employees left the company in just two years. Among the issues cited were low salaries, poor leadership, and favoritism among the higher ranks. Yes, the pandemic shutdown didn’t help but the bleeding doesn’t seem to have stopped for Goop. Over the past month, things have gotten bad enough that The Times suggested that Goop is undergoing an entire business reshuffle just to stay afloat.

Puck also got in on the act, reporting that, while Goop’s food vertical is doing well, the fashion and beauty parts are suffering. This is bad news given that they only recently launched a skincare line, available via Target. Puck wrote:

‘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.”’

Yikes. Puck then had sources saying that Paltrow seemed to have ‘disdain’ for some of the products she was selling, although Goop denied this in a statement.

Goop has always been a strange and unique presence in the world of celebrity branding. It’s so specifically Gwyneth and so deliberately inaccessible to the biggest markets and demographics that it shouldn’t have worked. Yet it became the benchmark for the celeb business model for years, with many a copycat (hello, Blake Lively) and wannabes following in its bare footsteps. Goop was widely derided for questionable science and promotion of straight-up quackery but there is also a known and monied audience who love that crap. Paltrow was savvy in commodifying all of this faux-wellness nonsense and selling it to her fellow rich white ladies. She was also extremely good at monetising those rage clicks and playing along with her own parodic image, as evidenced by that vagina candle that sadly exploded from time to time.

So, what changed? The wellness industry certainly hasn’t died; it’s only grown more powerful and intimidating since lockdown, and my Instagram feed is full of ‘self-care’ routines that are merely extended ads for a lot of Temu and Amazon crap. Rich lady companies are doing fine too, because that’s a demographic that stays rich regardless of the changing political tides. I don’t think it’s that we’re suddenly aware that Goop was peddling bullsh*t either. Sadly, snake oil and anti-pharma-driven rhetoric is extremely popular right now, and on all sides of the political spectrum.

To me, it seems like Goop has never been a hugely reliable profit maker for Paltrow. She herself admitted that at a business summit with Forbes, saying, ‘Some years, we’ve doubled in growth. Some years, we are flat. Some years, we’re down, then we’re back up.’ She wasn’t a businesswoman who jumped into a gap in the market. She was an actress whose side-project became a thing and she went along with it. Plus, while there is a niche for what she sells, it’s not as wide as would be needed to sustain a multi-pronged, Fenty-esque empire. Selling your makeup line in Target at an affordable price is a good idea, but nobody expects Goop to be affordable or for the masses, least of all people who go to Target and know what they want. If you’re looking for a moisturizer and one of the celebs shilling it to you has a dodgy history with pseudoscience and also radiates ‘eat the poors,’ why would you buy it?

Both skincare and clothing are crowded markets, even without the celeb brands in the mix. Where once everyone chased Gwyneth, now they all follow after Rihanna, and Fenty Beauty and Skin are killing it. Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty is a billion-dollar brand too. Plenty of celebrities have tried and failed to make their brands in this field a hit. It’s an expensive gamble and even the biggest skincare addicts are hesitant to put all that money down for a new product just because a famous name is attached. At least with a booze line, you can still get drunk.

If Goop is to survive, my guess is that it will be under someone else’s ownership. Puck certainly seemed to believe that a sale could happen in the future, which would make Paltrow even richer and probably result in more layoffs. Goop’s legacy is secure, but not in a great way. It was a landmark in modern celebrity branding, but it also further legitimized entire swaths of fake science, wellness nonsense, and quackery that was one step removed from anti-vax propaganda. As much as Paltrow tried to laugh off criticism and embrace her ‘white lady bullsh*t’ image, the reverberations of bad science and health-driven fearmongering are far mightier than a vagina candle.