Geordie Shore’s Abbie Holborn reveals real reason she’s shut her clothing brand FestiGirl down after eight years earlier this year.
In April, the reality star, 29, who shot to fame on the 14th series of the MTV show in 2017, revealed the news, and even slashed her prices down to just £5.
Abbie Holborn has revealed the reasons why she shut down her fashion brand Credit: Tiktok
The star pictured modelling some of the swimwear from her brand Credit: Instagram
Abbie created the brand when she was just 20-years-old and now taken to TikTok to share why she made the decision to do so.
The telly star started off with agent, later bought him out and ran the business from her bedroom in her dad’s house, with help from her nan.
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Speaking to her front camera with hair rollers in, Abbie explained: “So I started FestiGirl when I was about 20 and I’m 29 now, so, it was a long, long time ago.
“A lot has changed since then in the fashion industry, online, so much has changed.
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The star went into depth about why she decided to make the business move Credit: Tiktok
Abbie is best known for starring in Geordie Shore Credit: MTV
“FestiGirl was festival wear, it was swimwear, summer wear, it was such my passion.
“I’ve always been a raver, I’ve always loved my events and my festivals. I wanted to build a brand around that.
“That’s what I wanted to do, I had that vision and I went for it. I think back then, when I started it, it was 2018, TikTok wasn’t around, Shein wasn’t big then.
“There wasn’t really many influencers. It was slowly starting to creep up a little bit.
“All them years ago, in 2018, you were only really kind of well known or famous if you say if you were on a TV show.
“Now it is completely different with people having online presences, and YouTube, all these other apps. So many other ways you can make a name for yourself online. Back then it was completely different.
“I feel like I had a real niche, that no one else was doing, but now everyone has a brand. Every influencer has a brand. It’s so saturated, the market, for clothing products.
“Back then it was all quite new.”
She then went onto explain that the stuff she used to sell was “crazy” as they used to go out in the most “crazy clothes” – which included the neon colours, harnesses, chains and bondage.
Abbie confessed: “I think I hit it where it was good, and I actually did so well with it. I lasted a brand for eight years which is an achievement.
“The clothes were mad, crazy, no one would ever wear that now.
“I used to plan events, I would take girls away at festivals, book their accommodation, get the girls wearing it and promoting it, and I absolutely loved it.
“It was such a passion for me.”
But Abbie explained the last two years is when she “felt a hit” and a “change in the industry”.
She said: “You bought your clothes from where you bought your clothes, people didn’t know about suppliers back then.
“So it worked really really well for me all of those years.
“I saw a massive change about two years ago. So I used to buy all my stuff in wholesale from China, which was AliExpress, which everyone knows about today. But no one did back then.
“And yeah, I did start seeing a change, I’ve seen a lot of brands that were buying in wholesale started to close down.
“And 2024 was actually an alright year for me. Wasn’t too bad. 2025 I seen a real hit, I did go into previously designing and manufacturing my own, but it was a lot of money, and waste a lot of money on collections that didn’t sell.
“It was so expensive to be going back and fourth with China, trying to do samples, trying to get measurements right.
“The samples cost was so high and then you were going back and fourth for months to get one sample right.
“It was such a long expensive process that I didn’t enjoy doing.
“I loved buying clothes, I loved selling clothes, I didn’t enjoy the whole design process, and the back and fourth.”
However she did have phone calls with designers and researching online to see if she could thrive again.
But then at the start of this year she thought to herself ‘I’m doing this for the wrong reasons’ as she didn’t want people to think that she had failed.
She confessed: “I got to the point where I was like I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to spend more of all this money designing and manufacturing my own again.
“I’ve not got it in me. The fashion industry has completely changed.”
Fighting back the tears, Abbie said: “Closing the brand down really affected me. I found it really really hard at the start of this year, FestiGirl was my baby, my passion.”
She added: “I knew I still had a passion for the business side, I love clothes, but I knew that whole era had ended because I didn’t want to go down the route of designing.”
At the end of the clip Abbie revealed that she is looking into another business that is the complete opposite to FestiGirl.
She captioned the video: “It’s very rare I come on here being vulnerable but here you go!
“It’s been a hard few months but we are starting a new chapter and I’m excited for the future.”
