ALISON BOSHOFF: Is Holly Willoughby's Wylde Moon facing lunar eclipse? Accounts reveal TV golden girl's lifestyle brand is in the red

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Holly Willoughby may have the golden touch on screen – but it seems that doesn’t apply in the world of business.

Her Wylde Moon lifestyle brand has just filed its first set of accounts …and these show that it has a mere £149 in assets. That’s enough to buy a couple of her candles or three small bottles of her signature perfume The Wild.

The micro accounts indicate that there is over £283,000 in assets but creditors are owed £310,000.

The accounts also show that ‘Mrs Holly Baldwin’ which is Willoughby’s married name, took a £46,000 advance from the firm in the year up to October 2022.

Holly, 42, launched her Goop-esque lifestyle brand in September 2021 and it currently sells candles and perfume. The perfume was launched in February this year with a fancy event at the London Palladium.

Mixed fortunes: Holly Willoughby may have the golden touch on screen – but it seems that doesn’t apply in the world of business

Mixed fortunes: Holly Willoughby may have the golden touch on screen – but it seems that doesn’t apply in the world of business

In the red: Her Wylde Moon lifestyle brand has just filed its first set of accounts …and these show that it has a mere £149 in assets

In the red: Her Wylde Moon lifestyle brand has just filed its first set of accounts …and these show that it has a mere £149 in assets

Her own site shows decidedly mixed reviews for the scent with some disappointed shoppers saying it is ‘absolutely awful’ ‘very disappointing’ and noting the ‘cheap packaging.’

The site contains beauty and style advice and a section on spirituality where readers are advised on crystals, healing and auras.

The TV presenter said that the idea to launch her own lifestyle brand came to her in 2018 when she was in Australia hosting I’m A Celebrity alongside Declan Donnelly. She said: ‘I’ve always been fascinated with the moon, space, shooting stars and looking up.

‘On holiday, I spend more time on the sun lounger at night than during the day. The moon is always there – like the sun– no matter where you are in the world.’

She added: ‘I’d lost a part of who I was and that rediscovery has led me here, to a whole new place of beauty and power.’

She almost launched a lifestyle website with former pal, Dragon’s Den star Peter Jones, in 2018.

Jones was left high and dry after Willoughby decided she didn’t have the time to devote to their new lifestyle brand Truly — just weeks before it was to have been launched… with Holly as its face.

At the time, Holly said: ‘To launch a brand needs total dedication and at the moment, with so many other commitments, this is not something I feel I can do without it starting to affect my family time at home.’

Passion project: Holly launched her Goop-esque lifestyle brand in September 2021 and it currently sells candles and perfume

Passion project: Holly launched her Goop-esque lifestyle brand in September 2021 and it currently sells candles and perfume

Wellness: The site also contains beauty and style advice and a section on spirituality where readers are advised on crystals, healing and auras

Wellness: The site also contains beauty and style advice and a section on spirituality where readers are advised on crystals, healing and auras

Jones and his interior designer partner Tara Capp, 48, went ahead anyway with the online shop, and it launched in 2018.

In an interview, Capp said of Willoughby’s decision: ‘I’m not going to pretend. It was devastating. We were exceptionally close. And of course, as a business, you really feel the loss of a celebrity face.’

The Truly Group’s accounts, filed in April this year, make sobering reading. The company owes £1.4 million — a huge rise on the previous year, when it owed creditors £653,000. It records just £216,000 in net assets.

Notes to the accounts acknowledge that there is ‘material uncertainty’ as to whether it can continue, although they also state that as of April 26, creditors ‘confirmed that they have no intention to call for repayment from the company for a period of 12 months’

The notes also say that the so-called beneficial owner of Truly (believed to be Jones, who is worth £450 million), has confirmed it is his intention to provide the company with the financial support it needs, ‘to a period of 12 months’.

Jones and Capp note sales for the online business are up 10.7 per cent in the period up to April 2022 and say: ‘We are excited about the new opportunities that we continue to explore.’

Revelation: The TV presenter said that the idea to launch her own lifestyle brand came to her in 2018 when she was in Australia hosting I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

Revelation: The TV presenter said that the idea to launch her own lifestyle brand came to her in 2018 when she was in Australia hosting I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

Moving on: Dragons Den star Peter Jones was left high and dry in 2018 after Holly decided she didn’t have the time to devote to their new lifestyle brand Truly - weeks before it was to launch

Moving on: Dragons Den star Peter Jones was left high and dry in 2018 after Holly decided she didn’t have the time to devote to their new lifestyle brand Truly – weeks before it was to launch

Statement: Holly took to Instagram to make the announcement, informing her followers that she was unable to dedicate the required time to the brand

Statement: Holly took to Instagram to make the announcement, informing her followers that she was unable to dedicate the required time to the brand

The lifestyle website was dreamed up by Capp and Willoughby during family holidays together in Barbados, at the Capp-Jones villa, back when they were best friends.

Jones and Willoughby’s husband Dan Baldwin were close, too — their relationship pre-dated their wives’ — with Jones at one point holding a 40 per cent investment stake in Baldwin’s telly company Hungry Bear Media.

The plan for Truly was that Holly would front it, Tara would deal with sourcing and design, and Jones would be the chairman.

The hope was that all three would make around £10 million (each) in a few years. Instead, Jones was left ‘fuming’, and the friendship left in tatters.

In 2019, Jones stepped down as a director of Hungry Bear.

Capp said in 2020 that she and Holly were no longer friends, but added: ‘I’ll always thank her, because doing it together gave me the confidence to launch my own business.’

Holly, meanwhile, also moved into the field of self-help and spirituality, penning Reflections (which one critic called ‘the most banal self-help book ever written’).

She ditched the agents, YMU, which she shared with Jones, and fought over a ‘sunset deal’, which would have seen them benefit from commercial deals which were made when they represented her. She now represents herself via the company Roxy Media.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow started the wellness and lifestyle company Goop in 2008, initially as a weekly email newsletter containing advice.

It has since become an e-commerce juggernaut selling cosmetics, foods, clothes, homewares, skincare and much more. The company has been valued at $250 million.