Blake Lively Is Already Shutting Down Preserve

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Blake Lively's e-commerce and lifestyle site Preserve got off to an extremely troubled start and was never able to find its footing. Over the summer, Lively admitted to Time that she wished she had pushed the site's launch back and added, "If I had my dream, I'd put it on hold for six months or a year and then relaunch it." Now, it appears that Lively's dreams are coming true. The actress tells Vogue that she is shutting down Preserve, after debuting just a little over a year ago, in order to make the improvements she wished she had made earlier.

Preserve is currently hosting a mega-sale on its site that has cut the price on many of the products in half. This is all in preparation for October 9th, when the site will go dark until it is up to Lively's standards. "I never thought I would have the bravery to actually do that, to take the site dark and to say, ‘You know what? I haven't created something that is as true and impactful as I know it can and will be," Lively says. "And I'm not going to continue to chase my tail and continue to put a product out there that we, as a team, are not proud of."

Lively says she expects a heavy amount of backlash, but she adds that there's a plan in place for proving the critics wrong. Lively cites Jessica Alba's Honest Company, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as inspirations for her revamped site. And while she doesn't go into much detail on the plan she says its purpose hasn't changed drastically. "Our goal has always been to touch millennials through storytelling, and the idea is to create a shoppable lifestyle."

The shut down might also mean the end of Preserve for good. Lively adds that even though she likes the name, she worries it might be too unclear. "I love the name Preserve," she says. "But then, I never thought people would think Preserve had something to do with jam! Like, ‘Oh, you sell jams!' ‘No! It's like preserving things and us and life and artisans!'

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A photo posted by Preserve (@preserve_us) on Sep 28, 2015 at 9:27am PDT