Who could have saved the Middletons’ Party Pieces from disaster? A well-placed insider claimed that a ‘hardhead’ member of the family had taken the company to ‘new dimensions’

Still reeling from the failure of their mail order business Party Pieces, which went bankrupt earlier this year with debts of £2.6 million, times are tough for Michael and Carole Middleton.

The creditors were understandably angry. According to official papers, the company’s landlord was owed more than £57,000, while HMRC was owed £600,000.

Then it was the Middletons target of a malicious poster campaign complaining about the collapse.

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

It was reported that Michael and Carole’s youngest, James Middleton, whose wife Alizee recently gave birth to baby Inigo, took down the posters.

Exactly what went wrong with Party Pieces, a business that is believed to be doing well, remains unclear, although the effect of the Covid shutdown and the sharp inflation that followed have been cited as factors.

But the Middletons could perhaps be forgiven for wondering what might have happened if the circumstances had been different – ​​and a little less palatial.

Because according to Robert Lacey’s bestseller Battle of Brothers, eldest child Catherine had ‘a keen eye for profit and a very hard head on her shoulders’ that could have taken the company to ‘another dimension’.

The author writes all that Three of the Middleton children, Catherine, Pippa and James, were involved in the business from its kitchen days, modeling for photographs in the pamphlets their parents sent.

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

‘As Kate grew older, she styled images and helped develop the business, demonstrating a negotiating ability that matched her mother.

“Catherine had all the makings of a fantastic trader,” says a businessman who saw her operate firsthand.

‘”She has a keen eye for profit and a very hard head on her shoulders.

‘After university she worked at Party Pieces and I’m pretty sure she would have taken the company to a new dimension if she had stayed – very much in her mother’s style.’

As we now know, this was not to be.

The book quotes a remarkably sharp description of Carole Middleton’s stubborn trading style, which could make the collapse of her company seem all the more surprising.

“After about a year, Mike left his job at British Airways to help grow the company,” Lacey wrote. “Carole Middleton’s haggling skills became legendary in the direct mail world.

“The butter didn’t usually melt in her mouth, but she was a ruthless negotiator,” recalls one of her suppliers.

“I remember one time she almost screamed on the phone when I refused to lower my price on something. People could hear her from across the office – and that was in my office, with her voice coming over the phone from Bucklebury, or wherever.”

The company started in 1987, shortly after the Middleton family returned to the UK after living in Amman, Jordan from the early 1980s, when Kate was just two years old.

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

Carole, who grew up in a council flat and later in a small terraced house in Southall, west London, left school at 16 and worked for the Prudential insurance company before getting a job as a ground crew for British Airways at Heathrow.

There she met Michael Middleton, a flight coordinator six years older than her. His family was wealthy and he was privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol.

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

However, Carole wasn’t sure she was fit to be an expat mother to her two daughters, so they returned to Britain in 1986 – and it was a year later that Carole launched her ‘kitchen table company’ Party Pieces.

At first she was just preparing party bags for the parents of her daughters’ school friends, but over time the business grew enough that she took over a shed in their garden and eventually needed their own premises. to have.

The most significant change was the advent of online shopping in the 1990s. Michael Middleton left his job to get involved when the business took off.

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

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

Last year, an effort was launched to expand to America.

But in 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, according to a statement published by administrators.

The Middletons pointed to, among other things, the lockdown and the cost of living crisis, which caused a sharp drop in turnover and cash flow problems for their business.

Party Pieces has been part-sold to Teddy Tastic Bear Company Limited for £180,000, the document said, with the company employing 12 people 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 leave the business and retire, hoping to spend more time with their six – and counting – grandchildren.

It seems the opportunity came sooner than they expected.