Not well preserved

CEBU, Philippines - After just hitting the one-year mark in operation, Blake Lively is pulling the plug on Preserve.

The actress-turned-lifestyle guru will close the virtual doors of Preserve come October 9, explaining that the site never lived up to its mission statement, and that she's proud of the decision to know when to walk away.

"It's very exciting and it's also incredibly scary," Lively said. "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. 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.'"

While Preserve might have failed to live up to Blake's high expectations of connecting consumers with artisans, she wholeheartedly defends the concept of the website. In hindsight, the 28-year-old actress pinpoints part of the lifestyle site's defeat on launching prematurely.

"We have an incredible team of people who do beautiful work, but we launched the site before it was ready, and it never caught up to its original mission: It's not making a difference in people's lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way," Lively explained.

"And that's the whole reason I started this company, not just to fluff myself, like, 'I'm a celebrity! People will care what I have to say!' It was so never meant to be that, and that kind of became the crutch because it was already up and already running, and it's hard to build a brand when you're running full steam ahead—how do you catch up?"