Gwyneth Paltrow gets invited to tech conferences and new-media business forums regularly these days. Because of Goop, her still-growing online empire. I would personally like to see the receipts on Goop, because I still don’t see how it’s a completely self-sustaining business (especially with the top-shelf talent she’s paying to run the company), but that’s neither here nor there. Gwyneth is the face of Goop, always has been and always will be. Until she isn’t! Gwyneth was invited to the Sage Summit in Chicago, and she talked about her ultimate goal: to have the Goop-brand be completely separate from the Gwyneth Paltrow-brand. How in the world? Some highlights:
Describing her Goop: “Goop is an ecommerce and content platform, and we say that we are devoted to making every choice count. We like to push boundaries, we like to move the needle, and we are not afraid to create some controversy once in a while. We want to become the first truly modern lifestyle brand built on a digital platform and everything that encompasses.”
Starting Goop out of her home, wasting her own money: “Post-modernisation I think is where the challenge really is, I think for me personally because I was making a conscious career change and really accepting the responsibilities which came along with it. I did a crash course on being a founder, running a business, giving myself permission to take a seat at the table as the founder and what that meant. There are so many challenges, just in terms of everything that had to learn and everything I didn’t know – there was so much I didn’t know I didn’t know.”
The Goop brand & independence: “In order to build the brand I want to build, its scalability is limited if I connect it to the brand. So I always think how can I grow the brand, how can I separate myself from the brand and I think it’s going to be more its own brand. More and more I would like it to be its own brand – my dream is that one day no one will remember that I had anything to do with it.”
This gave me pause: “We want to become the first truly modern lifestyle brand built on a digital platform and everything that encompasses.” Is that true? Would Goop be the first “truly modern” lifestyle brand built entirely online? The thing is, I think she might be right? Most lifestyle brands do a dual-focus on brick-and-mortar stores and an online presence, but Goop’s business model has always been online since the beginning, then some “pop-up stores” came later. As for disconnected her Gwyneth-brand from the Goop-brand, I guess I’ve been listening to Gwyneth-speak for too long, because I totally understood what she meant. She wants Goop to grow and grow and it won’t be able to do that if she’s the only public face, I think. But – she IS Goop. That’s the whole point of the aspirational lifestyle she’s shilling. That if you buy Goop products and steam your V, you too can live like Gwyneth.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
WTF is that red outfit about ?
Seriously. So unflattering,
hideous
She looks like business Barbie.
She has a model like figure but the cut of those pants are all kinds of wrong.
I literally have no idea what she’s talking about. It sounds like a tossed salad of buzzwords and corporate speak and nothing of substance.
It’s to late she is forever Goop and Goop is forever her.
The stuff she talks about is stuff only Gwyneth would talk about (i.e the steam cleaning junk) so I don’t get how she can uncouple from the brand either. Even the Real Housewives don’t talk about the stuff she does.
I see that the slow morph into Donatella Versace is right on target.
Ha Ha Lassie, there does appear to be some filling going on.
Shelly and Lassie
My thoughts exactly
1. The fillers are nice but she needs to stay away from pillow face (Madge) or whatever face title you want to giv eDonnatella. With someone so thin as Gwen (not to be confused with her online brand) it’s either your arse or your face + fillers (and natch Botox).
2. The red suit. What the heck? Why do skinny ladies wear stuff that’s too tight (ahem , DoC this means you with your too tight shirt sleeves and too short at the navel shirt at the sailing event last week).
Aren’t all lifestyle brands like Martha Stewart’s online? I think that’s just the way things evolved. I don’t get how Gwyneth can possibly have been the first, even if someone like Martha Stewart started off on tv and in print.
You’re asking the right question. She’s trying to say because she uses the internets to sell stuff, this puts her on the cutting edge of world biz and tech trends. Really? Let’s fix this:
Goop operates using an ecommerce and content platform, like a gazillion other companies selling widgets, and we say that we are devoted to making every choice count just like Amazon.com and many others have been doing since the mid-1990s.
This!
Gwyneth is NOT the first exclusively lifestyle brand to root itself in an online context. What is IS is a product of the evolution of other lifestyle and online businesses ranging from Daily Candy to Amazon that have merged technology with catalog shopping with editorial influence. She is not unique (though I know she loves to think herself the first on everything)
And I agree, the receipts on Goop are a fair ask at this point. E-commerce, no matter how big your name is, is a risky venture and often these companies do not make it past the 5-6 year gate. Goop has recently been funded by VC money, but I don’t know what the company’s numbers are… I suppose you can look at Dunn & Bradstreet to see if Goop is posting quarterly sales. Goop has grown exponentially by venturing into cosmetics (an extremely risky and competitive field), retail (even more risky) and she also generates some income from book sales and appearances, but I’m not convinced yet of the viability of her company because her demographic is 1) not as large as Jessica Simpson’s or even Jessica Alba’s and 2) moneyed and fickle. These people are always looking for the next best thing
If Goop, which I think started around the height of the recession – 2008-09 – and went full force around 2012-13? If we still see Goop in 2022-23, then we can count it as successful. But aside from getting press and promotion, I don’t know how much of all that is converted into actual sales and profit.Yes, Gwyneth, show us the receipts.
…unfortunately the brand she is morphing into is “brad” brand…all these actresses have been completely outplayed by J Alba…& they’re all just hustling to Catch Up…good luck dears…
True and kissing up to Alba while doing it. About 2 or 3 years ago Goop sh*t talk Alba products on her blog giving it a grade C. Fast forward to last year with Goop tripping over herself to praise Jessica and The Honest products, while getting as many photos with her as possible.
GOOP is the rich/Hollywood version of getting a hobby to keep busy when the roles aren’t coming your way anymore. She’s not a business woman, she’s a socialite going back to her roots. Martha Stewart is the only one who could pull this off because she has talent. GOOP, Jessica Alba, Nicole Richie, Reese Witherspoon etc are all just pretenders to the throne. Plus, a net loss on the balance sheet becomes a nice offset to your taxes….Goop isn’t supposed to make money.
…and she needs to put down the filler needle, she’s starting to get moon faced.
Couldn’t agree more, she looks freakish in that top pic!
I wonder if the real reason for all of this is that Goop is still having financial troubles? For years Gwen has been putting in more money into the company than what she was getting out of it. Her business partner/money man left the company and she been hustling to find a new one in China for awhile.
If Gwen separate herself from Goop it can quietly phase out without a big public fail. She can always say it failed because she was no longer the face of the brand.
This could absolutely be valid. No surprise how celebrities and other public figures will plant seeds very early to head off pr disasters and controversies they foresee down the road.
I think you’re onto it.
it sounds like she’s hoping to sell it, which only works if it exists beyond her. she probably hears about others’ start-ups and has $$s in her eyes
you should dig up her original quotes on the reason she started goop. it was never to be a business and never about $$$$ (because gauche).
there’s even a quote out there from her brad pitt-stop days complaining the paps were following them into barney’s to see what face creams they were buying and just giver some bleeding privacy for fark’s sake.
for someone that *rulze* the inter webs she forgets once it is out there it is forevah.
🙄
did the educated minion running her empire get her to finally realize she is poison and goop can’t win until they wipe her completely off the platform if it is ever to be profitable?
she’s lucky she has that oscar life jacket to keep her from drowning in obscurity.
I just want to smack the smugness out of that first photo.
I feel like these women’s careers die off, and they become domestic wannabe gurus.
Way to return to a regressive ideal.
That red pantsuit and matchy-matchy shoes are so horrible I love them. That outfit *could* have worked…were it not for the tragic tailoring.
She sounds like the 80’s business guy from the Futurama episode ‘Future Stock’. “Let’s practice your execu-speak”.
Is she capable of uttering anything that is not pretentious?
“giving myself permission to take a seat at the table as the founder and what that meant”.
Uggghhh.
She should just take a seat, period.