What To Know About The Middletons' Failed Family Business Party Pieces

Before Carole Middleton's eldest daughter became Catherine, Princess of Wales, she was just a regular mom trying to give her children the best life possible. Like every mother, Carole wanted them to enjoy memorable birthday parties, but she soon realized it was a tough feat. In 2021, Carole shared with the Daily Mail that when she went searching for party supplies for Kate Middleton's fifth birthday, for instance, she quickly learned that the market was cluttered with simple and slightly weird options. "All I could find were basic clown plates," Carole recalled.

So, the then-pregnant mother-of-two started designing more creative and pocket-friendly party supplies, but retailers weren't interested in her proposition. Carole didn't lose sleep over the rejections and started her own company, Party Pieces, in 1987, in Kate's gorgeous childhood home in Berkshire. In Carole's 2018 Good Housekeeping interview, she detailed how she'd started her business, noting, "I found suppliers and put up notices in my daughters' playgroup that said 'Planning a Party?' and started getting orders."

Since the business began with her children in mind, it's only natural that they all made their mark in creative ways. As Carole explained, "Catherine started the First Birthday brand — she chose the products and looked after all the imagery and the catalog production." She continued, "Pippa set up the blog, as we didn't have one. James [Middleton] came up with the idea of personalized cakes and got them off the ground for us."

In Carole Middleton's 2021 Daily Mail interview, she acknowledged that despite all the stresses of handling Party Pieces, she wouldn't have it any other way because she had a deeply rooted passion for her work. Unfortunately, Carole couldn't hold onto her dream forever and she ultimately sold the venture to Teddy Tastic Bear Co Ltd owner James Sinclair in May 2023. A Sky News report claimed that the company had entered administration, a form of insolvency in the U.K., at the time of its acquisition. 

According to Hello! magazine, Party Pieces was valued at £30 million in 2013 and greatly contributed to Kate Middleton's family fortune and her lavish life before she became a royal. A decade later, Tatler reported that Sinclair only paid £180,000 for his stake in Party Pieces. They also confirmed that the company had accumulated over £2.5 million in debt and suffered substantial financial losses in 2021. 

Will Wright, a joint administrator for Party Pieces, explained that its finances had taken a massive hit because pandemic restrictions on parties greatly reduced the demand for their products, per The Guardian. The Middleton family business records similarly displayed that the losses incurred could be partly attributed to the massive investments made toward self-manufacturing party supplies and international expansion plans.

Party Pieces' sale reportedly brought significant money troubles for Carole and Michael Middleton. According to an April 2024 report in The Sunday Times, the couple was unable to shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees to Interpath Advisory, the firm dealing with their business's dissolution. An Us Weekly insider revealed that Carole and Michael didn't want their daughter, Catherine, Princess of Wales, to be burdened by their financial problems amidst her cancer treatment, so they steered clear of the topic as much as possible whenever they spoke. 

A few days later, Christopher Andersen, royal expert and author of several books about The Firm, informed Us Weekly that the royal family wasn't too concerned about the Middletons' failed business since their attention was focused solely on dealing with Kate Middleton and King Charles III's concurrent health issues. "People shouldn't make the mistake that the Middletons are broke because they decidedly are not," he clarified. "Their business went belly-up because of things entirely out of their control."

Likewise, in James Sinclair's 2023 interview with The Telegraph, he shared that Carole had kept Party Pieces in top shape until she walked away from the business in her 60s to focus on her family. The Teddy Tastic Bear owner argued that investors who bought Carole's 49% stake had made terrible business decisions that ultimately led to the company's downfall. The Mirror asserted that Kate's mom stepped back in 2019 but stayed on as the face of the business and jumped on board again to help with the 2023 sale.