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Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's blog-slash-lifestyle brand-slash-beauty company-slash-vitamin retailer-slash-etc, launched 16 years ago, spurring a spew of copycat celebrity brands and products like the infamous orgasm candle.
But despite its outsize place in the cultural conversation, Goop has struggled to define itself over the past decade and a half, and it looks like it's still having trouble.
Goop is cutting 18% of its 216-person staff, citing a change to its organization, WWD wrote on Thursday. It will now focus on beauty, fashion, and food — specifically its Goop Beauty and good.clean.goop beauty brands, G.Label clothing line, and Goop Kitchen restaurants.
That means it's moving away from wellness, home, travel, and sexual wellness, some of which are categories that once defined the brand.
Goop started out as a newsletter of Paltrow's favorite things before becoming a website and then a mini-empire.
Ten years into its run, in 2018, it raised $50 million in a Series C round; it has raised a total of $134.5 million and was last valued at $433 million in 2020, per PitchBook. At the time, it was largely a media and e-commerce company, shilling alternative health products like jade vaginal eggs as well as its own line of supplements, signing deals with media giants like Condé Nast, and hosting summits that could cost thousands to attend.
Throughout its many iterations, it also had a Netflix series, a line of home goods, and its own publishing imprint.
Recently, it has doubled down on beauty and food.
Over the summer, Goop opened its first store to offer in-store treatments. Last year, it launched good.clean.goop, a lower-priced line of skincare that sells in Target and on Amazon. (An exfoliator from the brand costs $20, while one from Goop Beauty retails for $125.)
Puck reported in June that the lower-priced line is in the "'bottom 15' at Target." Neil Saunders, a managing director at GlobalDatal Retail, told Business Insider that while being in Target has increased the brand's exposure, "more needs to be done by Goop to really cut through, especially with younger consumers."
Goop Kitchen — a ghost kitchen, or delivery-only restaurant — was founded in 2021. It has multiple locations in southern California and recently raised $15 million from investors like Uber cofounder and CloudKitchens CEO Travis Kalanick at a $105 million valuation, according to PitchBook.
Goop's many pivots have not been without internal turmoil. In 2021, BI reported that at least 140 employees, including executives, had left the company over a two-year period, with some saying they felt underpaid.
"Leadership training is where I'd be spending all my time," a former employee told BI at the time. "Sometimes, when you have founders who are also CEOs, that passion can be a blind spot."
While the brand has had three CEOs since its inception, Paltrow has been its chief executive since 2017.
The brand told WWD that its revenue was up last year over 2022 and is on track to increase again this year, though did not provide any numbers.
Goop did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Do you work for Goop or have a tip about the company? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at mberg@businessinsider.com.
