Kardashian West’s Skims brand defies pandemic

Not long after Kim Kardashian West launched her shapewear brand Skims in 2019, pandemic lockdowns consigned its bodyfitting product line to the back of consumers’ closets.

But Skims survived. Moreover, it has become a billion-dollar business.

The company has raised $154 million in new funding, which Kardashian West said had lifted its valuation to $1.6 billion. It is a heady amount for a not-quite two-year-old clothing brand, even one led by someone with her star power.

It also cements Kardashian West’s status as a billionaire in her own right. In announcing her entry into that club last week, Forbes estimated Skims’ value at much less than that. She will remain Skims’ biggest shareholder after the deal, and she and her business partner, Jens Grede, will control a majority stake. Skims benefited from a welltimed introduction of pajamas and loungewear, with product lines such as the “cozy collection” bolstering sales as women have traded form-fitting styles for sweatpants. But shapewear made Skims famous, and it remains the company’s central product line.

“We’re your basics go-to,” Kardashian West said in a Zoom interview as she prepared for a photo shoot, even as “we’re still able to keep that shapewear core.” Kardashian West said she was deeply involved in Skims, from helping to design fabrics and collections to picking photographers for product shoots to studying sales data. (And like most things Kardashian, Skims has at times been a family affair: Kanye West, Kardashian West’s now-estranged husband, was “superinvolved” in the beginning, giving frank criticism of early designs for Skims packaging, she said.)