Forbes article: How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built A $900 Million Fortune In Less Than 3 Years

[Charnell]

Just curious, but how did all those "startup" streetwear brands end up, and were you able to help some of them take off? By "startup" streetwear brands, I assume you're referring to the type on Reddit (aka r/streetwearstartup)

There were a few standouts that do/did well, but for every one that actually does well, there are a hundred that are some high school kid using print-on-demand services for his math class doodles. Which isn't necessarily bad, they just see it as something cool to do rather than a business. Make a few dollars selling to their friends and family. Again, absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can tell who takes it serious and who takes it Instagram serious.

 

[ExaltedLife]

Shrug. Still bored by them, Rockefeller was way more interesting, and he was basically an accountant.

 

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[TonyStark]

This is what happens when you combine good looks...


The female version of Jeff Bezos.

“Good looks,” okay, if you consider plastic surgery and Botox attractive.

And the female Jeff Bezos? Sure, one revolutionized online shopping, owns dozens of other companies, and runs rockets into space, and the other one sells makeup.

Hardly a comparison. Lmao

 

[Xeon]

19,900% increase in 4 years. Nuff said.

 

[rpeck90]

but getting a piece of the Kylie lifestyle

But that's my point... what is the Kylie lifestyle? Kim lifestyle I can understand. Kendall I can understand (professional model), but what's Kylie done that's so remarkable? Why are people following her on IG?

Kendall is the least attractive of the sisters, IMHO.....

I don't find Kendall attractive (my post above was within the context of being a professional model), but I can understand why she has several lucrative modelling contracts, including one with the much-coveted Victora's Secret. She has the figure for it. Kylie doesn't.

Having just looked over her IG again, maybe it's me. Maybe I just don't like her style and see through all the photoshopped bullshit. Maybe my years in marketing have desensitized me to the pull of "the perfect pout". Are giant lips-which-hardly-move because-they've-been-paralyzed-by-botox really that attractive?

Maybe I'm Piers Morgan in disguise:

'The thing about Kylie Jenner, she’s not even that good looking, is she? She’s not,’ he said. ‘I would have her number four on the list of Kardashians, and the two above her aren’t much better. ‘I’m not being rude, the only hot Kardashian is Kendall, none of them are that hot. If they weren’t Kardashians famous for the sex tape – that’s how they all became known – if they weren’t Kardashians, they would not get in to the average Croydon nightclub. The bar is set pretty low in Croydon, as we know.

‘I think Kendall is the only one who you could say is model quality. She could be a supermodel. Kylie is as dim as a rock of bricks. ‘What does this say about our society, that these talentless, vacuous twerps are billionaires? ‘The only good thing of this is Kim will be seething. She made the sex tape, she owned the sex tape, she had to perform… Poor Kim, she put the yards in for the tape. Ray J, why have his siblings not become billionaires? It’s so unfair.’

Not insinuating anything (just threw it in because Morgan mirrored my sentiments).

Everyone has their own opinion of attractive, and I would not want the thread to be derailed into a "who's hotter" contest. I was only highlighting that I didn't see how Kylie gained so much notoriety despite being - what could be argued - among the plainest of the sisters. Plus it provides a juxtaposition which is always important when looking at stuff like this. I'm intrigued as to how she amassed so many IG followers.

Here's the video of what was quoted if interested.

--

Polish/Ukranian/Russian women on IG

One of the few women I genuinely see as naturally attractive (and I don't have much exp with EE) is @vosidova. Don't know who she is or whatever, but she's the type of woman I see as having a natural "look" which I feel most duck-lips are trying to replicate. Angelina Jolie had it too, as you've said.

--

Regardless of her numbers, Kylie entered the makeup industry and dominated largely because of the quality of her lip kits. At the time she started, the whole matte lip trend was unheard of. People don't think of that and assume she didn't do anything special aside from being born into fame, but that isn't technically true. She was pushing a new product..and many women I've talked to have said that her lip kits are the best there is: doesn't crack, smudge or look dusty after application. It was really hard to find a matte lipstick at the time that didn't crack. (I realize this sounds like mindless beauty talk, I'm just sharing the customer experience). The only company that came close to a profitable dupe is ColourPop, and that came around 6-7 months after her, and didn't really explode until a few years ago. She had a long time in the market to saturate that cash. Now, I can agree her selling out her kits can be attributed to her name, but there is more to brand loyalty than that: people love her look and product, so it certainly seems within the realm of possibility that she is a billionaire, the disagreement is whether any seed money should be a negative or positive.

All of the videos I sat through affirmed this, though it must be stated that she basically palmed off the manufacturing of the product to a company called Spatz Laboratories. Spatz apparently used to work with high-brow companies like L'Oreal before they dropped it to work on Kylie's stuff. I'm not really partial to that, so I'll have to research further. As far as I can tell, they seem to have dipped into L'Oreal's intellectual property in order to create some of ColourPop's products, and got hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from L'Oreal as a result. If you're interested, I can research more into what went on.

In terms of ColourPop, they appear to be manufactured in the same place (seriously), and (crucially) was started by the same duo who helped found Kylie's brand -- "Seed Beauty". It also seems their father owns Spatz...

Sibling co-founders Laura and John Nelson started a parent company called Seed Beauty as an offshoot of their father's makeup company Spatz Laboratories, which produced makeup products for other brands. ColourPop Cosmetics is a brand owned by parent company Seed Beauty, which also owns (<- REALLY?) Kylie Cosmetics and KKW Beauty. The company started as an e-commerce business, then expanded to selling wholesale to retail stores as well. The brand's first retail partnership was with Sephora in 2017. In 2018, ColourPop also partnered with Ulta Beauty.

Seed Beauty, a two-year old company launched by Laura and her brother John, was built on the back of a 60-year-old family business. In 1989, the Nelson family purchased the established Spatz Laboratories from its founder. Laura and John forged out on their own, however, studying and working respectively in retail and product development, and finance and manufacturing, before coming full circle into the family business, she tells me...

THAT is fastlane.

You have a single company who basically bakes up these niche cosmetics brands off the back of rampant social media followings and give all the orders to their dad in his factory (who takes 50% for COGS). Genius...

​

--

Thanks for the rep! @Xeon

 

[PizzaOnTheRoof]

Inside Kylie Jenner’s Web Of Lies—And Why She’s No Longer A Billionaire

Earlier this year, Kylie Jenner sold half of her cosmetics company in one of the greatest celebrity cash-outs of all time. But the deal’s fine print reveals that she has been inflating the size and success of her business. For years.

www.forbes.com

From the article:

Data from ecommerce firm Rakuten, which tracks a select number of receipts, suggests there was a 62% decline in Kylie’s online sales between 2016 and 2018.

More likely: The business was never that big to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016—including having their accountant draft tax returns with false numbers—to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth. While we can’t prove that those documents were fake (though it’s likely), it’s clear that Kylie’s camp has been lying.

So either the business collapsed in sales or they just committed fraud with fake tax returns...

 

[msufan]

Step 1. Have your sister release a sex tape.

Step 2. Get your family picked up by reality television in the United States.

Step 3. Lambo

Lightning is not going to strike like this very often.

The people buying her sh*t are celebrity star gazers who think if they carry the same thing she tweets they will be like her. It's a unique moment in time, predicated less on value and more on celebrity. Granted, she and her extended family have leveraged that well into the $000's (and great for them!) but none of their stuff is predicated on value.

I find her success more of a sad commentary on slow lane America than I do on her business prowess.

Exactly. Fair play to her, but this is not the model for the rest of us to attempt to follow.

 

[YoungPadawan]

It makes me wonder how a person could build a large audience like that through social media from scratch.

It might be beneficial to analyse her tweets and Instagram to see what we could emulate from her to our own businesses.

 

[YoungPadawan]

"Kimberly Kardashian West[1] (born October 21, 1980) is an American reality television personality and socialite. Kardashian first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton, but received wider notice after a 2003 sex tape with her former boyfriend Ray J was leaked in 2007."

She's literally famous for having a leaked sex tape and being friends with another celebrity (who also happens to be "famous for being famous"). The entire family just parlayed it incredibly well into a cult following and TV show, and it's been snowballing since.

Kylie's initial publicity came from her last name. She didn't do anything remarkable. The business came after the celebrity status, and the celebrity status came from birth.

Note that I'm not knocking her success (maybe just a bit), but just pointing out that her success really isn't replicable. You can't do it the way she did it, because you're not already famous.

Yes, I know who the Kardashians are. What I meant, is to analyze the psychology behind the tweets and posts. What gets the people going? What types of posts get shared more? Stuff like that.

Step 1: get famous celebrity family, step 2 ..........

Well, I'm famous in my own mind.

 

[Bearcorp]

You don't need a celebrity family to grow a social media following, or to sell products to that following. To make a billion in a few years maybe you do though

The family name/brand is a powerhouse. If what is said is to be believed the mum is behind it all and a very savvy woman.

 

[HackVenture]

What I meant, is to analyze the psychology behind the tweets and posts. What gets the people going? What types of posts get shared more? Stuff like that.

That's the thing, she could post something and have people rolling on the floor laughing and exclaiming how funny she is, and I could copy and paste the exact same thing and have people calling the police on me or more likely, I'll just get crickets.

Celebrity is more art than science IMO.

 

[TheOrchestrator]

That's the thing, she could post something and have people rolling on the floor laughing and exclaiming how funny she is, and I could copy and paste the exact same thing and have people calling the police on me or more likely, I'll just get crickets.

Celebrity is more art than science IMO.

She's simply leveraging one of her assets: influence. Her influence is worth millions, and she knows that, and uses it well. She's knows how stupid the whole thing is, but she also knows how much value it generates for her as well as others who make money off of her. So yeah, I think there's still a lot of science to this.

 

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[Miorin]

Richard Peck, you here? I'm a big fan of you and ludvig. Great work on TUCS.
-

What I'm trying to undestand is the obssession with the Kardashian family. I can't get it.

 

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[LleixG]

If it was that easy for a celebrity to be worth 900m we would see a ton of examples, and she did it in 3 years. She must have done something right.

 

[Ray Goslin]

Richard Peck, you here? I'm a big fan of you and ludvig. Great work on TUCS.
-

What I'm trying to undestand is the obssession with the Kardashian family. I can't get it.

They're brilliant at marketing being famous for no reason!!

 

[rollerskates]

I will not allow that to blind me to the fact that this young woman has something I do not.

LIPS

 

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[ApparentHorizon]

Can she turn those first-time buyers into customers who buy whatever she’s selling every month?

Surprised they're not doing a subscription box

 

[TheCj]

The mother is definitely amazing, Just really learned about this family last week. Comes across as a real life day time soap opera.

I just see the daughter as the new spokesperson for the brand that hits the target demographic. Just like any brand they have to have a spokesperson that connects with there target customer.
The one thing that stood out is how early they all have kids. Thus ensuring they will have relevant brand representation for there target demographics, when this daughter becomes too old, or old news. Rinse and repeat.

 

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[Roli]

And here I am screwing with a product that I hope to make several mil from over the next few years.

What am I doing with my life.

Time to get a sex change, buy some yoga pants and start hitting instagram up with your 'fit pics' :-D

 

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[GSF]

it reconfirms levels of possibility that most of us have mentally written off as unobtainable

I take more inspiration of whats obtainable/ achievable from the likes of gymshark, who started from nothing in 2012 and went from 0 to £100m in 6 years from his mums garage.
The 26-year-old with a £100m sportswear brand
fair play to kylie but meh

 

[Jeff Noel]

If Kim K tweeted TMF and said, "OMG, what a great book" I'd be sitting on Oprah's stage right now.

Networking at its finest . I wonder what the ROI on that 500K tweet could be...

 

[rpeck90]

I guess beauty is subjective huh?

Jeff Bezos made his 1st billion at the age of 35, Kylie made hers at 21 (JESUS!!!).
Assuming she continues to branch out and expands like power-hungry Bezos, I won't be surprised if she hits US$15 - $20 billion by the time she reaches 35.

From what I see in billionaires, once they reach 1 Billion net worth, the wealth then somehow goes up exponentially, it's like all of a sudden, it becomes easy to make your next 10 Billion.

As much as I hate to say this, people get salty / butt-hurt when they see girls like her making bank.
If she is a guy, I actually think the reception would be different.

I put a wager that her net worth will surpass Elon in 15 years time. Speaking of Elon.....failures after failures and all hype, and nerds are worshipping him like there's no tomorrow lol.
I give her 3 years max to surpass Mark Cuban and Sara Blakely's net worth.

Brains, beauty, butt.....and billions....she has it all.

You're conflating fame with celebrity.

 

[G-Man]

Are we still debating this? How many rich kids and child stars are there that were in the lucky DNA club that ended up in rehab or otherwise impoverished? Also, thanks @MJ DeMarco Luckbox looks pretty cool. Got the free sub.

 

[luniac]

itd be cool to see a case study of the 4 years of kylie jenner's business decisions and actions that led to such growth.

 

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[Xeon]

Very interesting insights again from you, especially on the production vs consumption part, and 10%-marketing-90%-results point.
I always remembered this line from a software sales book I read almost 2 decades ago : "Marketing Gods Make Software Kings".

I guess Kylie is a good example of the kind of philosophy you used to talk about : selling the intangible. It was never about the product, but getting a piece of the Kylie lifestyle when you buy her lip kits.

I still don't understand how her, Kendall , Gigi + Bella Hadid got "modelling" contracts. They really aren't attractive at all (Kendall MAYBE).

Kendall is the least attractive of the sisters, IMHO.....

I really don't see why people follow her. She's stumpy, fake and doesn't have any "look" that's not available from other professional models. A model/actress I found the other day (who grew up near me) does it better than Kylie.

I *think* Kylie Jenner and/or Kim K is the one that pioneered and started the whole ultra-wide-hips + butt-implants + duck lips trend, and made it popular among millennial western women.
Since last year, I've been noticing even Polish/Ukranian/Russian women on IG with duck lips which they were not born with. There were some celebs like Angelina Jolie with duck lips but it never caught on until Kim K/Kylie got famous for that.

Some of the modern day Internet slang like "thiccc" are also often associated with them.

I don't remember seeing anyone with her kind of facial aesthetics until she came onto the scene.
It's what I always refer to as the "Kylie Jenner look" in my guy-talk convos lol

 

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[rpeck90]

Inside Kylie Jenner’s Web Of Lies—And Why She’s No Longer A Billionaire

Earlier this year, Kylie Jenner sold half of her cosmetics company in one of the greatest celebrity cash-outs of all time. But the deal’s fine print reveals that she has been inflating the size and success of her business. For years.

www.forbes.com

 

[1Ivanov1]

Awesome...


~Stivan

 

[Merging Left]

We checked into Kim Kardashian tweeting out one of our products. not sure what the current rate is but at that time a little over a year ago it was a half a million dollars for one tweet.

That's crazy to think about, but if your product fits her audience, it's also crazy to think that your half-a-mil expense could have a 3-digit ROI.

 

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[GSF]

It makes me wonder how a person could build such a large audience like that through social media from scratch.

It might be beneficial to analyse her tweets and Instagram to see what we could emulate from her to our own businesses.

Step 1: get famous celebrity family, step 2 ..........

 

[Ray Goslin]

Kylie Jenner Is Not a "Self-Made" Billionaire — Kylie Jenner Net Worth and Privilege

Spot on. Forbes is putting it that she is self made. She did use $250,000 of her own money she got from modelling, however she's riding on the coattails of celebrity. She may have been successful on her own, but not with the speed and magnitude.

 

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