Business
Armed with venture capital, Skims and Kim Kardashian write their 'second chapter'
Kim Kardashian was already a successful celebrity businesswoman when she launched Skims five years ago.
But more often than not, she simply had attached her name to a string of existing companies: QuickTrim supplements, Carl’s Jr. salads, Skechers Shape-Ups, Sugar Factory confections, Midori liqueur, Silly Bandz bracelets, Beach Bunny swimwear, and so on.
“We did every product that you could imagine — from cupcake endorsements to a diet pill at the same time, to sneakers or things that I didn’t know enough about for them to be super-authentic to me,” the reality television star told The Times in 2019. “Like it all made sense a little bit, but it wasn’t my own brand.”
Skims, Kardashian’s homegrown apparel company built upon her famous curves and her love of body-cinching shapewear, was on brand — and, finally, her brand.
Kim Kardashian at a Skims pop-up at the Grove in 2021. The company pulled in nearly $1 billion in net sales last year and will open its first physical stores soon.
(Skims)
Its first years were marked by explosive growth. The start-up is now a retail juggernaut with around $1 billion in net sales and Kardashian has become a savvy entrepreneur with an eye for spotting and setting trends. Skims has made a huge dent in the shapewear market previously dominated by Spanx while adding several new categories to its merchandise mix.
This year Skims is aggressively moving into its next phase, one that will see the Hollywood company enter the competitive bricks-and-mortar space for the first time.
Underscoring Skims’ growth is the heightened interest the retailer is drawing from investors. Last year it raised $330 million in venture capital funding, ranking it second among companies in the greater L.A. area and the only retail brand in the top 10, according to a recent analysis by CB Insights.
That influx of cash was particularly notable given the tough investment climate locally: The region saw a steep decline in venture capital funding from 2021 to 2023, when the amount of investment dollars fell 74%, the analytics firm said.
Co-founded by Karadashian, who is chief creative officer, and Jens Grede, the company’s chief executive, Skims pulled in nearly $1 billion in net sales last year, according to Bloomberg, roughly double its 2022 total.
Kim Kardashian, center, in a Skims ad campaign starring Candice Swanepoel, Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum and Alessandra Ambrosio.
(Courtesy of Skims)
The company is reportedly eyeing an initial public offering this year. Kardashian and Grede declined to comment.
What began as a collection of undergarments designed to give women a more flattering, contoured silhouette has swelled into a comprehensive apparel giant: There’s underwear, bras, swimwear, dresses, tees and tanks, loungewear and pajamas. Inclusive sexy-meets-cozy clothing is the hook, with merchandise available in a wide range of sizes and skin tones.
In October, Skims launched a menswear line and became the official underwear partner of the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball. It sells some accessories and clothing for kids, and this year will open bricks-and-mortar stores in several cities including a flagship location in Los Angeles.
“Skims has evolved into becoming a brand that can provide comfort for all audiences, not just for women,” Kardashian, 43, said when announcing the menswear line.
Usher in Skims. The brand launched menswear in October.
(Courtesy of Skims)
The company’s swift rise was undoubtedly fueled in part by Kardashian’s name and marketing prowess. She models the latest collections herself, posting glossy professional photos and casual at-home closet videos to her millions of social media followers, and has tapped her A-list friends to star in Skims ad campaigns including Lana Del Rey, Kate Moss, SZA, Cardi B, Sabrina Carpenter, Usher and Patrick Mahomes.
“Kim Kardashian’s visibility, I think, gives them a big leg up on marketing,” said Alex Lee, research editor at CB Insights, which compiled its data by analyzing companies in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
But more than that, Lee said, Skims “is a really interesting example of the confluence of celebrity with technology and consumer trends.”
The rise of athleisure — stylish athletic clothing that can be worn at the gym or as everyday wear — was a game-changer in retail, said Simeon Siegel, managing director at BMO Capital Markets, who follows companies including Victoria’s Secret and Lululemon.
“That notion of comfort stretched to every possible category of apparel,” he said. “What we saw was a race among companies to figure out how to apply what Lulu revolutionized. Shapewear was a very logical category to go after with the new advancements in technology,” which includes improved fabrics and better fits.
Skims at first sold its products online only through its website before expanding to retailers including Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue and hosting occasional pop-ups. Its foray into physical stores “marks the second chapter” for the company, Grede said in an interview with Bloomberg last year, and its ambitions are high.
Kim and I can envision a future where years from today there’s a Skims store anywhere in the world you’d find an Apple store or a Nike store.
— Jens Grede, Skims co-founder and CEO
In the fourth quarter, Skims is scheduled to open a 5,000-square-foot store on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The company also plans to open stores in other U.S. cities and then target major international markets.
“Kim and I can envision a future where years from today there’s a Skims store anywhere in the world you’d find an Apple store or a Nike store,” Grede said.
Skims was most recently valued at $4 billion after a funding round last summer, a valuation that propelled Kardashian to sixth on Forbes’ list of the World’s Celebrity Billionaires 2024 with an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion.
“No one has cashed in on reality star fame more than Kim Kardashian, who has become a billionaire from her beauty and clothing brands,” the magazine said.
Lululemon, the yoga pants and athletic clothing company, has hired a former executive from a rival, Nike, as its new chief executive.
Heidi O’Neill, who spent more than 25 years at Nike, will take the reins and join Lululemon’s board of directors on Sept. 8, the company announced on Wednesday.
The leadership change is happening during a tumultuous time for Lululemon, which had grown to $11 billion in revenue by persuading shoppers to ditch their jeans and slacks for stretchy leggings. But lately, sales have declined in North America amid intense competition and shifting fashion trends, with consumers favoring looser styles rather than the form-fitting silhouettes for which Lululemon is best known.
“As I step into the C.E.O. role in September, my job will be to build on that foundation — to accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance, and unlock growth in markets around the world,” Ms. O’Neill, 61, said in a statement.
Lululemon, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has also been entangled in a corporate power struggle over the company’s future. Its billionaire founder, Chip Wilson, has feuded with the board, nominated independent directors and criticized executives.
Lululemon’s previous chief executive, Calvin McDonald, stepped down at the end of January as pressure mounted from Mr. Wilson and some investors. One activist investor, Elliott Investment Management, had pushed its own chief executive candidate, who was not selected.
The interim co-chiefs, Meghan Frank and André Maestrini, will lead the company until Ms. O’Neill’s arrival, when they are expected to return to other senior roles. The pair had outlined a plan to revive sales at Lululemon, promising to invest in stores, save more money and speed up product development.
“We start the year with a real plan, with real strategies,” Mr. Maestrini said in an interview this year. “We make sure decisions are made fast.”
Lululemon said last month that it would add Chip Bergh, the former chief executive of Levi Strauss, to its board to replace David Mussafer, the chairman of the private equity firm Advent International, whom Mr. Wilson had sought to remove.
Ms. O’Neill climbed the organizational chart at Nike for decades, working across divisions including consumer sports, product innovation and brand marketing, and was most recently its president of consumer, product and brand. She left Nike last year amid a shake-up of senior management that led to the elimination of her role.
Analysts said Ms. O’Neill would be expected to find ways to energize Lululemon’s business and reset the company’s culture in order to improve performance.
“O’Neill is her own person who will come with an agenda of change,” said Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company. “The task ahead is a significant one, but it can be undertaken from a position of relative stability.”
Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.
In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.
The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.
“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.
The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.
“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.
Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.
Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.
The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.
But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.
Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.
Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”
Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.
“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.
They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.
Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.
The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.
But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.
“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”
Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.
“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”
Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.
Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.
It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.
The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.
The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.
Oil prices rose and stocks moved slightly higher on Wednesday as investors tried to make sense of President Trump’s decision to extend the cease-fire with Iran despite doubts about the status of another round of peace talks.
An adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the influential speaker of the Iranian Parliament, dismissed the cease-fire announcement, saying that it had “no meaning.” He equated the U.S. naval blockade with bombings, with commercial vessels coming under attack near the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane that has been at the center of a growing energy crisis.
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