The Real Reason Kate Middleton's Parents Suffered Financially

It was once impossible to think that Kate Middleton's parents could ever face financial problems. In 1987, Carole Middleton launched a party supplies business when she struggled to find reasonably priced decoration that suited Kate's personality for her fifth birthday. "All I could find were basic clown plates," she told the Daily Mail in 2021. "I realized there was a gap in the market for party ware that wasn't too expensive and which looked good."

She wasn't the only one who had noticed it. Party Pieces was a hit. Through it, Carole, originally from a working-class background, didn't just climb a few steps — she reached all the way to the top. The prosperity brought by Carole Middleton's multi-million dollar business allowed her and Michael Middleton to send their three children to prestigious schools that opened the doors for Kate to become Princess of Wales. After all, Kate met Prince William thanks to her academic choices and opportunities.

But after 36 years in business, Carole and Michael sold Party Pieces for about $223,000 in May 2023. At the time, the business was more than $3 million in debt. Just two years earlier, Carole expressed enthusiasm for what the future held for Party Pieces. "They say if you do a job you enjoy, you don't work a day in your life, and I truly feel like that," she told the Daily Mail in 2021. The reasons behind the business's downfall are familiar to any entrepreneur in today's world.

When COVID-19 reached pandemic levels in early 2020, most people retreated into their homes as governments imposed lockdown measures. Overnight, no one was allowed to throw parties across the U.K., and Carole and Michael Middleton felt the consequences. "Party Pieces is a well-established brand with a proud British heritage, but like many other companies across the retail space had been impacted profoundly by the restrictions on social gatherings," one of the administrators hired by the Middletons told BBC in May 2023.

Between 2021 and 2022, Party Pieces suffered a net loss of about U$1.1 million. The Middletons applied for a loan to try to mitigate the losses, but it threw the business further into debt and forced them to sell. And because the loan scheme was sponsored by taxes, the roughly $274,000 the Middletons owe the bank was likely to be footed by the taxpayers. The Middletons' public image was hit hard.

It also didn't help that some of the creditors accused the Middletons of using their connection to the royal family to gain their trust. "What hurt me the most was that I trusted her as the mother-in-law of the future king — and she just betrayed me," a spokesperson for the company that supplied them helium told the Daily Mail. None of this reflected positively on Kate Middleton, which supposedly led Carole and Michael to make an undesirable decision to protect her.

Carole and Michael Middleton still had business dreams to accomplish. They knew they would sell Party Pieces eventually, but the idea was to launch another enterprise, First Birthdays, a company they went so far as to register in 2006 to guarantee no one else would take the name. That plan went down the drain amid Party Pieces' bankruptcy. Instead, the Middletons decided to go into retirement to avoid causing Kate Middleton further embarrassment. 

"The couple were busy planning their next move but have now scrapped any future business plans to protect their daughter's reputation," a source alleged to Express in November 2023. "Anything the Middletons do will inevitably swing back on Kate, so it's best that her mum and dad keep a low profile moving forward." Carole is said to have been devastated by how things turned out. Some claim she was actually unaware of the financial state Party Pieces had been in, as she had previously sold 49% of her stake and stepped back from administrative duties.

Party Pieces' new owner, James Sinclair, even came out in Carole's defense. "When she handed Party Pieces over to investors and shareholders, it was in textbook condition," he told The Telegraph in October 2023. The downfall came after, he contended. Carole reportedly regrets her decision now. "Carole believes in accountability and accepts she had been a little naïve to step back and trust someone else to run the business," an insider told the Daily Mail.