Kylie Jenner is nothing if not enviable. Yesterday, Forbes crowned her the world’s youngest billionaire at
the tender age of just 21, two years younger than Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who last took the title at 23.
Her company is worth at least $900 million (£684 million) — and she owns all of it. Add the cash she’s already taken from the business and she has an estimated fortune of $1 billion (£761 million). A large part of that empire is Kylie Cosmetics. It’s existed since 2015 and is largely run from her phone. “What was your crowning achievement at 21?” she seems to pout from Instagram posts that accrue more than two million likes. Here’s how she struck gold.
The life of Kylie
From the age of 10, Jenner grew up under the glare of TV cameras filming reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians (KUWTK), which gained her an audience. Moreover, it’s an audience that’s grown up with her in the age of social media.
Since 2007, KUWTK has documented the lives of the Kardashian-Jenners. The New Yorker called them the “First Family of American reality TV, and emblems of the zeitgeist.”
Jenner says: “It’s the best job anyone could ever ask for — hang out with your family all day.”
Follow the leader
Despite — or because of — this intrusion, Jenner is one of the planet’s savviest social media operators, converting that audience into a nine-figure business.
She is a native in the world her predecessor Zuckerberg helped create, showing intuitive business acumen to turn her reality TV followers into record product sales. Jenner has 128 million followers on Instagram, three-quarters of whom are estimated to be aged 18 to 24, and she is so influential an influencer that when she tweeted that she was “sooo over” Snapchat last year, more than $1 billion was wiped off the company’s stock market value. Social media is the world in which she’s launched products, previewed new items and announced whatever Kylie Cosmetics shades she’s wearing to those who follow her across Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. “It’s the power of social media,” Jenner has said. “I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything.”
Pocket power
“The beauty of Kylie Cosmetics”, Forbes magazine says, “is its minuscule overhead —and the outsize profits that go straight into Jenner’s pocket.” Kylie Cosmetics’ staff consists of just seven full-time and five part-time employees.
Manufacturing is outsourced to Seed Beauty, based in California. Sales and fulfilment are handled by online merchant Shopify. Jenner’s mother takes care of finance and PR.
The heir
Last year Jenner gave birth to her first child, Stormi, with long-term boyfriend, rapper Travis Scott. Inspired by Scott’s Astroworld album, Kylie had an entire theme park built for her daughter’s birthday. Stormi World had moving cakes, Baby Shark performing, and Chanel gifts. #Stormi World was blasted across the channels. Modern parenting.
To paraphrase the song, that’s how it’s “doo doo doo doo doo” done.
