The Him of Skims

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fashion People - "The Him of Skims"

Release Date: December 13, 2024

Introduction

In this episode of Fashion People, host Lauren Sherman and co-host Jens Greed delve into the intricate world of fashion and retail with a focus on current consumer trends and the meteoric rise of Skims, Kim Kardashian's iconic brand. The episode features insightful discussions with Dan Fromer, publisher of The New Consumer, and a comprehensive interview with Kim Kardashian herself. They explore topics ranging from the evolving landscape of e-commerce and TikTok Shops to brand integrity and strategic retail expansions.

---

Conversation with Dan Fromer: Unpacking the Latest Consumer Trends

Timestamp: 02:19 – 15:15

Lauren Sherman welcomes Dan Fromer to discuss his annual Consumer Trends Report, a collaboration with Coefficient Capital. This report provides a deep dive into significant shifts in consumer behavior, including spending patterns, shopping channels, and overall sentiment.

E-commerce Resurgence

Dan highlights a notable rebound in e-commerce, stating, “E-commerce spending has doubled in five years” (04:46). Despite the easing of pandemic restrictions, online sales continue to surge, attributed to the convenience of shopping from home, substantial discounts offered online, and the rise of mobile shopping and buy-now-pay-later options. During Black Friday, U.S. e-commerce saw a 10% increase, while overall online shopping for the season rose by 9% (05:22).

TikTok Shops: A New Commerce Frontier

The conversation shifts to TikTok Shops, a relatively new player in the e-commerce arena launched in September 2023. Dan reveals staggering growth figures, mentioning, “TikTok shop in Q3 was bigger than Shein, was bigger than Sephora” (07:47). This platform integrates digital storefronts within a popular entertainment app, fostering a seamless content-to-commerce experience. Despite concerns over trust and potential bans—“Almost 40% of Americans think that the Chinese government is using TikTok... to make Americans feel more socially and politically divided” (10:17)—TikTok Shops have managed to surpass established brands in credit card spending, driven by aggressive discounting and high visibility.

Ozempic and Consumer Health Trends

Dan touches upon the persistent narrative around alcohol consumption, countering the belief that it’s on the decline. Contrary to trends in cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption remains steady. Interestingly, a segment of consumers using GLP-1 medications like Ozempic plans to increase their alcohol intake, reflecting a complex relationship between health trends and lifestyle choices (13:07).

---

Interview with Kim Kardashian: The Strategic Brilliance Behind Skims

Timestamp: 15:18 – End

Lauren Sherman and Jens Greed sit down with Kim Kardashian to explore the success story of Skims, her shapewear brand, and her broader approach to fashion entrepreneurship.

Retail Strategy and Collaborations

Kim discusses the meticulous planning behind Skims’ collaborations, such as the recent partnership with The North Face. She emphasizes the importance of intentional collaborations that align with brand integrity: “A true collaboration, the nature of it is that you are allowed as a brand... to do something that you wouldn't normally do” (22:05). This synergy enhances both brands' strengths, ensuring that collaborations are authentic and resonate with consumers.

Product Philosophy: Integrity Above All

When asked about the importance of product quality versus marketing, Kim asserts, “Product is number one, number two, and number three. And then comes everything else” (53:57). She believes that exceptional product quality is essential in today’s informed and comfort-seeking consumer market. Kim stresses that brands must solve genuine needs and maintain integrity to build lasting relationships with customers.

Managing Growth Without Compromising Integrity

Addressing concerns about overexpansion in the luxury market, Kim explains Skims’ deliberate retail strategy: “We spent a lot of time conceptually with that [store]... It's been the beauty of the whole Skims project that Kim and I have been in control of our business and how we want to build it” (64:35). Rather than prioritizing rapid expansion for revenue, Skims focuses on creating immersive and exciting retail experiences. This cautious approach ensures that each new store upholds the brand’s standards and uniqueness.

Future Outlook: Innovation and Expansion

Kim shares her vision for continuous evolution and category creation within retail: “I'm really trying to get it with Kim to define a new category of retail that sits between lounge and intimate...” (69:22). With plans to expand both domestically and internationally, including infrastructure development in Europe, Skims aims to meet growing demand while maintaining its core values of quality and integrity.

The Power of Personal and Professional Partnerships

Discussing the synergy between personal relationships and business success, Kim highlights the collaboration with her wife, Emma, and other key partners: “I think that Emma is an exceptional merchant and I think she's exceptional pretty much every single way” (44:03). This deep trust and clearly defined roles within the team contribute significantly to Skims' sustained success and innovative drive.

---

Conclusion

This episode of Fashion People provides a comprehensive look into the current state of fashion retail, emphasizing the critical role of product integrity and strategic partnerships in building successful brands. Through engaging conversations with Dan Fromer and Kim Kardashian, listeners gain valuable insights into navigating the complexities of e-commerce, emerging platforms like TikTok Shops, and the nuanced strategies that drive brands like Skims to unprecedented heights.

Notable Quotes

• Dan Fromer: “E-commerce spending has doubled in five years” (04:46)
• Kim Kardashian: “Product is number one, number two, and number three. And then comes everything else” (53:57)
• Kim Kardashian: “A true collaboration... you are allowed as a brand... to do something that you wouldn't normally do” (22:05)
• Kim Kardashian: “We spent a lot of time conceptually with that [store]... We've been in control of our business and how we want to build it” (64:35)

---

For those interested in staying updated with behind-the-scenes discussions in the fashion industry, Fashion People offers an engaging and insightful exploration of the latest trends and business strategies shaping this multi-trillion-dollar market.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Accepting insurance without the support of a group practice can be tough, but most people looking for mental health care want to use their benefits to pay for sessions. If you're interested in seeing clients through insurance, ALMA can help. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks. Visit helloalma.com to get started. That's hello a lma.com ready to level up Chumba Casino is your playbook to fun. It's free to play with no purchase necessary. Enjoy hundreds of casino style games like bingo, slots and Solitaire anytime, anywhere with fresh releases every week. Whether you're at home or on the go. Let Shumba Casino bring the excitement to you. Plus, get free daily login bonuses and a free welcome bonus. Join now for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Play Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void were prohibited by law. 18/ DNC supply.

[Lauren Sherman]

Hello and welcome to Fashion People.

[Jens Greed]

I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet today. With me on the show is Skim.

[Lauren Sherman]

CEO and Serial Fashion founder Jens Greed. We discuss the state of retail, the.

[Jens Greed]

State of celebrity brands, the state of the luxury industry, and so much more. Plus, the new consumer's Dan Fromer checks in to share some stats from his.

[Lauren Sherman]

Recent report which covers everything from the.

[Jens Greed]

Rise of TikTok shops to Ozempic.

[Lauren Sherman]

Before we get going, I wanted to.

[Jens Greed]

Remind you that if you like this.

[Lauren Sherman]

Podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email three times a week called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference.

[Jens Greed]

It's an original look at what's really.

[Lauren Sherman]

Going on inside the fashion and beauty industries.

[Jens Greed]

Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical and above all, fun.

[Lauren Sherman]

Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance.

[Jens Greed]

The art world, and much more.

[Lauren Sherman]

If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to Puck News Fashion People to join Puck or start a free trial.

[Jens Greed]

Now let's get started with the show.

[Lauren Sherman]

Happy Friday everyone. I am joined for this upfront segment today by a very special guest, the one and only Dan Fromer, publisher of the new Consumer Dan, welcome to Fashion People.

[Dan Fromer]

Thank you. An honor to be on my favorite podcast.

[Lauren Sherman]

So, just a quick disclosure, Dan is also my husband and we've known each other for a really long time and we actually started working together. So our working lives have intersected for many years and we used to actually do a podcast together. Do you remember?

[Dan Fromer]

For many years. Yes.

[Lauren Sherman]

No one look it up. No one look it up.

[Dan Fromer]

I think I stopped paying the hosting bill, so hopefully it's time.

[Jens Greed]

Oh, really?

[Lauren Sherman]

Oh, that's kind of sad. Remember when Squarespace was our advertiser and we were really proud.

[Dan Fromer]

It was amazing.

[Lauren Sherman]

It was. It was a great moment in our lives.

[Dan Fromer]

True legitimacy.

[Lauren Sherman]

Anyway, I wanted to have you on really quickly this week to talk about this report, this annual report you do about consumer trends. Sarah Shapir wrote about this for line sheet on Thursday. So everyone should check out. She kind of pulled out the line sheet adjacent information. But there were. You gave me a little preview earlier in the week of what was going to be in the report. Just to start. Tell me about the consumer trends report, how you put it together and what the big idea is.

[Dan Fromer]

This is the 11th report I've done over the last five years with a venture firm in New York called Coefficient Capital. It's a collaboration between them and me, the new consumer. We're fascinated by huge shifts in the consumer, whether it is spending, behavior, shopping in different channels, sentiment, and how they think about their personal finances or how they think about things that are happening in business and society. We started this report in 2020 when every chart looked absolutely crazy. And in fact, this report starts with a little bit of a retrospective going back to five years and sort of what's back to normal now. E commerce spending. Remember that crazy chart of how all the money went online and then went back away? Well, we're actually back at that Covid level now of E commerce. And in fact, E commerce spending has doubled in five years. More than doubled. And we always look at a bunch of different topics, things that we think are growing that are going to matter for the future. Things like TikTok Shop and a bunch of other topics in this report.

[Lauren Sherman]

Okay, so explain to me what happened with E commerce because I noticed this during Black Friday where the sales in store were essentially flat and they were busy, but I think people just didn't want to sit in traffic or try to get into these crowded parking lots, which are really scary on. On those types of busy shopping days. But E commerce sales are up like 15% or something like that. They increased dramatically. What's going on that online spending is picking up so much again because people are out and about. It's not like they're sitting at home.

[Dan Fromer]

Yeah, E commerce up in the US 10% on Black Friday and 9% for the whole shopping online shopping season through early December according to Adobe. I mean, I think a couple of things are happening. One is just it's a lot more convenient to shop online. I think the bigger thing that's happening is there's just profound discounting. Like it's much cheaper to shop online. It feels at least much cheaper to shop online than it does in a store. The discounts are in your face, you know, directly in your email or sometimes via text. A huge growth in online shopping is mobile shopping. And another thing is buy now, pay later, which is a lot easier to do online than in the store. So it's a little less fun. You know, you and I love going shopping in stores, although we probably do most of our buying online so.

[Lauren Sherman]

Yeah, but we don't go shopping in stores at home.

[Dan Fromer]

It's true. Well part of that is the quality of the stores at home.

[Lauren Sherman]

Well that's true, but that's the thing. Most people don't live in New York or Paris or London and we go, we travel a lot and you're going to Tokyo next week. What do you do in Tokyo? There's nothing else to do but shop.

[Dan Fromer]

Just shopping. Coffee and shopping.

[Lauren Sherman]

This is part of our professional lives. Generally though, I don't want to go to the Americana at 5:30 on a Saturday when it's a clusterfuck and I don't want to get in a car accident in a parking lot. That does not seem like a good place to have a car accident accident. I don't know about you, but that's not my, my ideal agree especially with that new big car that you just got like. So let's talk about some of the other trends. The other big thing is TikTok which obviously in the last two weeks there has been a lot of reporting about the potential TikTok ban. They have till January 19 to sell it to I guess an entity outside of China. I don't know if it has to be an American company or not that buys it, but I assume there'll be some sort of deal that happens before January 19th. But it's a, a sort of wait and see situation at the moment. What did you find out about TikTok shops that surprised you? Which TikTok shop launched, which is their in app shopping launched September 2023. So it's not even two years old. What's going on there?

[Dan Fromer]

Yeah, so three kind of mind blowing things about TikTok. One is, and we kind of feel this, but to see it in data is to really comprehend. You know, we asked our survey panel, part of our work is we do a survey of over 3,000Americans. It's designed to be a nationally representative survey. And among people who know about TikTok, more than 60% of Gen Z say they use it every single day. So this is something that is just built into young people's lives in America. And so that I think is. And this story, you know, we've talked about content to commerce for I don't know what, 20 years that we've known each other. This is a massive content to commerce success. This is integrating a digital storefront into a wildly popular entertainment platform. And it has worked. A year ago, we did some research on TikTok shop and said, I don't know if this is going to continue. You know, people are spending some money here. They're buying goofy novelties that their favorite creators are arguing about. Is this actually going to keep growing? It's more than doubled year over year. And if you look at the credit card spending panel data that I have in the consumer trends report, TikTok shop in Q3 was bigger than Shein, was bigger than Sephora, and it was way bigger than old school home shopping among us credit and debit card accounts. So in less than a year and a half, it is now a larger business than Sephora, which is absolutely wild. And then the third thing is, you know, you mentioned the ban. The number one reason people told us they haven't shopped on TikTok shop is trust issues. They don't trust TikTok with their credit card number. They don't trust the quality of the products. They don't really trust TikTok. Another wild data point was that almost 40% of Americans think that the Chinese government is using TikTok, specifically its content algorithm, to make Americans feel more socially and politically divided. Even among people who use TikTok every single day, less than half of them told us, no, we don't think China is doing this. So there's a lot of, a lot of cynicism and a lot of mistrust around the TikTok ecosystem. But somehow it has built this massive business about people buying cheap stuff. $8 workout clothes, $11 viral hair brushes. And it's just become so huge that it's, it's almost unfathomable how fast it's.

[Lauren Sherman]

Yeah, we did buy that hair. I did buy that hairbrush. We forgot about that.

[Dan Fromer]

Yeah, it was fine, but I don't.

[Lauren Sherman]

Even think I have it anymore.

[Dan Fromer]

No, it's long gone.

[Lauren Sherman]

I wonder what happened to it. Okay, so do you think that this, what, what do you. Because we do talk about this content to commerce thing a lot. It doesn't normally work because there are various reasons why, but I think mostly because when you try to get someone to read something and then buy something, no one wants to read anything. But the video stuff doesn't always work either. But on YouTube it seems to really work. Like if a YouTube creator starts, does a merch shop or something that becomes successful, et cetera. I think the company that owns the Holdco that owns Starface is interesting. They the way they do content to commerce. I've talked to a couple of the people who manage those specific businesses like overdrive their new business and the way they manage it is interesting from a legitimate product perspective, brand maker. But do you think the reason it's been so successful is because it takes like what makes the potency of QVC or Home Shopping Network and applies it to Amazon Marketplace essentially?

[Dan Fromer]

I think there's a level of shamelessness that TikTok has crossed that Instagram or YouTube won't, which is they really just cram the shop in your face. You can't miss it. And they've really incentivized their, I hate the word creators, but their creators to make videos about these products and generate controversy. And you know, one of the craziest things about TikTok shop is you can see the unit sales of every single product. So you can see a huge brand. I won't name any blue chip brands on here that have sold like I don't know, 5,000 units.

[Lauren Sherman]

Why you can name one, I just don't remember.

[Dan Fromer]

I got to look it up. But then you, then you, then you see that almost half a million people have bought this like cheap teeth whitening kit TikTok shop or 2 million people about this kind of no name shapewear brand. So I think some of it is it's the kind of stuff that organically would perform well on TikTok. Like oh, this is too good to believe, this is too cheap to believe. Plus just the shamelessness of TikTok to just shove it in your face. They've also heavily subsidized that they're discounting like crazy. That's something I haven't yet been able to measure. But if you're a data provider and you can tell me the discounts that TikTok is providing on each order, get in touch. But yeah, it's a totally different world than something that Instagram would be Comfortable. I'm sure Instagram looks at TikTok Shine and goes, this is wild. We would never do something like this.

[Lauren Sherman]

I mean, who knows, who knows what will happen in two months.

[Dan Fromer]

They might have to someday really quickly.

[Lauren Sherman]

Because we don't have much time. What's going on with Ozempic? What's the latest? Because you always have a lot of Ozempic or GLP1 data.

[Dan Fromer]

Yeah, we'll probably have more for our spring report on food and wellness. One thing that was interesting, you know, there's kind of this narrative that alcohol is on its way out and it's just not true. Most people plan to drink the same amount that they were drinking before. Booze is not cigarettes. Cigarettes consumption has gone way down in America, but alcohol has been actually very steady. The non alk substitutes are just super niche right now. Younger consumers, consumers are more interested in them, but it's just not that big of a thing. But what was interesting is one of the groups that said they planned to drink more next year in our survey were people who say they're also on GLP1s because gotta get out to the bar and you know, get, get drinking while we look this good.

[Lauren Sherman]

But the thing is, when you're on them, you supposedly a don't have any desire to drink and B are not like, I don't think you're supposed to drink a lot when you're on them because they probably affects your liver and kidney and all that stuff.

[Dan Fromer]

Yeah. And of course there's a disconnect between what people say they want to do or plan to do and actually do. So. Yes. In a lot of other studies you've seen, GLP1 users actually do cut back on drinking, but more of them intend to drink more next year than the average person, at least in our survey.

[Lauren Sherman]

One theory. I did speak to one person who's been on them for a long time and is in maintenance phase and they told me that like they can drink now and enjoy it. I think at the beginning when you're on it, if you're on it, if a really intense dose, you can't. But maybe you. So that's an interesting point. Okay, well, interesting, I guess. No Dry January.

[Dan Fromer]

Something like 22% of drinkers say they plan to have zero drinks in January. About half of Americans know what dry January is. Much higher among rich people though, than the average.

[Lauren Sherman]

Yeah, I bet it is. You know what I do mine is no sugar January, which is super fun for everyone.

[Dan Fromer]

Probably healthier. 107 slides newconsumer.com trends get it.

[Lauren Sherman]

You're too good. Thanks, Dan.

[Dan Fromer]

Thank you.

[Jens Greed]

Jens Greed. Welcome to Fashion People.

[Kim Kardashian]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be with you today.

[Jens Greed]

What do you have for breakfast this morning?

[Kim Kardashian]

I have the same breakfast. I think I've had the same breakfast for probably seven or eight years. It's a smoothie. I have half a banana, half an avocado, spinach, mint, various powders and creatine and protein and that's it. That makes me feel great.

[Jens Greed]

I feel like creatine is the trendy powder of the moment for women in particular.

[Kim Kardashian]

It makes us look good, but it has some real cognitive benefits too.

[Jens Greed]

I don't really do smoothies but it apparently helps with muscle recovery or something.

[Kim Kardashian]

It helps with muscle recovery for sure. And if you work out you'll find you'll have a bit more strength during your workouts. But the reason I take creatine really is for cognitive. Cognitive health. And if you're sleep deprived, let's say. And I have four children, so there's moments when I am. And creatine really helps you function a lot better with less sleep. And yeah, there's a lot of evidence pointing to that really helps with cognitive health. As we. As we get older, which we don't want to be. We don't want to get older. So a creatine me up.

[Jens Greed]

I remember I had a friend who was in college when I was in high school whose boyfriend used to take it because he wanted to get more muscles and he thought it would help him, but it didn't work.

[Kim Kardashian]

Come on. If you can have more muscles and better cognitive health for. I think it's a pretty good supplement. I mean I. I like smoothies because it's hard to consume all the stuff that we need to consume that's good for us in pill form. So it's just an easy way to access all of that and I'll get on with the rest of my day.

[Jens Greed]

I agree. I'm going to start taking creatine and I will report back to the fashion people listeners how it goes. The not sleeping thing. I'm pretty good about sleep, but when you're really busy. I only have one child, I don't have four. It does kind of make it hard to sleep seven or eight, which is what I try to do normally. So that's a really good point.

[Kim Kardashian]

So you're shifting time tones, you know, and it really helps. And I think there's a few things we can do to help our brain stay healthy. Through periods of sleep deprivation. And I think it's incredibly, incredibly important. We function so much worse when we don't have quality sleep.

[Jens Greed]

That's true. Speaking of time zones, where are you right now?

[Lauren Sherman]

Are you in New York or Los Angeles?

[Kim Kardashian]

In Hollywood, California at my office.

[Jens Greed]

Are your offices are in Hollywood?

[Kim Kardashian]

I'm a trailblazer.

[Jens Greed]

I guess so. And are you going to New York this week for the.

[Lauren Sherman]

The store opening?

[Jens Greed]

The skim store open opening?

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah, I'll go tomorrow morning. And the store opening is Thursday, but today we're of course dropping the North Face skim collab. So I've heard it's pretty wild at the stores right now. I think it's crazy traffic this morning.

[Jens Greed]

How do you manage that type of collaboration drop online when you all first started, I mean you had done e commerce sites prior to skims, obviously, but like I remember those first few drops and stuff would sell out in what, an hour or something. How do you manage the traffic to the website so it doesn't crash? Is that a big challenge for you all or are we in a post crash world because of technology advances?

[Kim Kardashian]

Sites can crash. It can for sure crash. That happens. It's is normally a technical oversight. And if you haven't prepared your partners for the surge in demand, I mean this morning the site did not crash. We were well prepared for it. But the whole collaboration sold out in about I think 10 minutes. It was like something I've never seen before. We had almost 200,000 people on wait list as of last night. And it just went. Yeah, it just.

[Jens Greed]

How much of that is you being conservative about the order and how much of that was in this case like you didn't expect the demand to be that high.

[Kim Kardashian]

I mean it's a combination of a number of things. It is, you know, how much inventory can you get? Right. I think customers don't see how actually hard it is to manufacture excellent product in a somewhat timely fashion and getting that into a warehouse. So it depends when those conversations start, how much inventory we can actually get. We were very inventory constrained for this collaboration. So that's one part. The other thing is for collaborations, you want them to be special. You're not trying to buy so you just have infinite amount of product because it kind of dilutes the specialness of the moment. And lastly, very hard to know what customer will think. We think of these things a year or so before they come out and it's hard to anticipate the mood a year from today and we've had a. I would Say pretty warm fall and early winter until now. So I think people were finally very excited about buying winter gear. So I think all of those things kind of play in. But also I think the execution of the product, the campaign around it, the moment right now, it just created a demand that was four or five times higher than we could ever have anticipated. It really took me by surprise.

[Jens Greed]

When you do a collaboration like this is because the North Face is the technical brand. Are they the ones doing the manufacturing? How do you manage that? Because I assume when you do a collaboration on underwear or something, that's probably you all in your factories. But in this case, would it be their factories or is it a mix of both? How do you manage the manufacturing for something like this?

[Kim Kardashian]

It's normally a mix of both. I would say it was the Dolce too, or Fendi back in the day. It tends to be who can make what thing at the right quality and price in time. And it's not like just one partner does everything. A true collaboration, the nature of it is that you are allowed as a brand. You can do something that you wouldn't normally do yourself. So you have larger creative freedom to expand what customers is expecting from you. And it should be fun and innovative. So both brands really want to do something they don't normally do. So you kind of use each other's strengths and that goes from a factory base. But I think it's equally true for design and marketing.

[Jens Greed]

How did this come together? Was it something that you all thought? I thought that the campaign was brilliant and looked so good and that, I mean, first and foremost it looked great but also traveled and people were excited about it. But like, where did this idea in particular come from? And then you pulled in Vanessa Beercroft and the North Face itself. Obviously they've done a lot of great collaborations, but you have to have their buy in and your buy in. How do you make something like this work?

[Kim Kardashian]

Having most great collaborations start organically through a conversation between principals. Kim has been wearing North Face for as long as I've known her and she has been tailoring her North Face jackets for as long as I've known her. So I think we approached the North Face about this several years ago. And then, you know, I can't really say the moment it turned like we're doing it. I think over time it kind of just like we're doing it. But yeah, it's a conversation that I think first happened a couple of years ago. It was not overnight. It took us a while before we actually pressed Play but yeah, no, it really started organically with that's something we were all wearing. And we contacted them and said we have this way of wearing North Face and customizing North Face, and we'd love to skimsify that.

[Jens Greed]

So one of the reasons I was excited to have you on here is you, to me, have a very unique approach to retail and branding that is defining this era of the mall or whatever, the conceptual mall that lives in our heads. And something I think you have in common with a lot of your predecessors is this ability to sort of latch onto a cultural moment or make a cultural moment and make it feel like the product you're making is embedded in that moment. And what you. This thing with the North Face, like an algorithm, could have spit out that you all should do this, but the Kim tailoring her North Face jackets is why it's going to be successful. Like, you could have just done a bunch of North Face stuff in Skim's colors, but it wouldn't be enough. Maybe we can go back a little bit to how you got started in this business to sort of explain, like how you get to this point when you execute something that is so on point, sells out more quickly than you could have ever imagined. And sort of exemplifies why skims in particular is best in class, but why you generally have had so much success in the world of retail.

[Kim Kardashian]

Well, I've been in the fashion industry my whole life, and I started as a journalist at the age of 19 and then through the Wallpaper Group and I started my own agency with my best friend Eric, and that grew into something called the Saturday Group. And you had to be around a long time to remember the Saturday Group. But it was.

[Jens Greed]

I remember it.

[Kim Kardashian]

It was really the first kind of fashion marketing, PR entertainment group of scale, and it was of real scale. And some of those companies that we either created or co founded or invested in or back, they are still around today and incredibly successful businesses like Tomorrow or agencies like General Idea or Wednesday Group. And I really spent the first 15 years of my career building this group and as an image maker, working with the greatest, not just designers, but also entrepreneurs and leaders of the fashion industry. And at some point in my early 30s or mid-30s, I felt I rather be like the people I work for rather than just service them. And that led me to ultimately, we sold the Saturday Group and it was a large business at the time, and we sold it to Omnicom and we sold it into public group and private equity. And we kind of dismantled this first Chapter very successfully. And I decided to focus on being a brand owner and brand builder myself. And it started with Eric and I creating this company called Frame that we still own to this day. And of course later on partnering with Kim to create Skims, amongst many other things that we've been involved with directly or indirectly over the past decade.

[Jens Greed]

So when you moved from being a marketer and a person who helped create brand images into creating a brand yourself, that obviously that the marketing is a piece of it. What did you learn in those early days of Frame about? Because Frame is hugely successful denim and. And now lifestyle brand that continues to grow and have different iterations. A lot of those denim brands that launched around the time frame launch, what, 2012, 2013, they don't exist anymore. What did you learn in those early days that you feel like are the foundation of what you do now?

[Kim Kardashian]

I think I learned from Remo Raffini, who is the CEO of Montclair. And he bought that brand when it was long forgotten, but it had been a popular brand both in the 70s and the 80s, and he bought it at the low. And he's created a global powerhouse in Montclair over the past 20 years. What I saw in Bremer, he took this performance led product and he really attached it to the values of the fashion industry in design, in terms of how you build stores, how do you create excitement and theater in those stores around the product. I saw how he brought in designers like Kishi and created a way of doing fashion in winter, kind of redefining that category. So I was very inspired by it. And if it wasn't for Remo, I don't think I would have started Frame because I looked at the denim category and Eric and I really pursued something similar. You know, we had lived and worked in the fashion industry our whole lives. Like, I can't even remember when I met you first, Lauren, but it must been a very long time ago, right? In a totally different lifetime. So that was our world. So when we started Frame, we attached it to the people that we knew, the people that surrounded us, and we connected this brand, you know, to the fashion industry at large. And I think many of the same principle applies to Skims. It's a very technical product. It's a category product. And we tried to reinvent the category for product design for innovation, but also through the theater of retail and attaching it to both fashion and popular culture.

[Jens Greed]

One thing that I remember from the early Frame days is you did a. A gene with Carly Kloss. Correct. Did you learn anything about the power of, like, personality and celebrity that turned you on to partnering with big names to launch brands, because you've done that.

[Kim Kardashian]

So. No.

[Jens Greed]

No, that's. I mean, that's. That's a better answer.

[Kim Kardashian]

And I'll. I'll tell you. Well, first of all, I love Carly. She was a defining. That was a defining factor in the early days of the success around frame. That was just something that hadn't been done in that category. So it was incredibly important for us, and we're so grateful to Carly for doing it again. That was entirely organic. It was something that came up at dinner once Eric asked Carly, why don't you wear our brand? And she said, well, they don't really fit me. And he was like, well, let's just make them fit you. And then out of that collaboration, again, I come back to the same thing, which is great things happen organically, and you kind of feel like a consumer when it's fake. But when it has a sense of authenticity, it tends to resonate with people. But coming back to the idea of this quote, unquote, celebrity brands, I really don't like the idea of celebrity brands. To me, it stinks of the fragrance shelf at cvs. That's the smell that I have in my nose when someone says it. Because what I recognize, rather, is the shift in our culture. And if you look at our most successful designers, Tom Ford, Demna, or Heddy, they're all celebrities. Tom Ford put himself in his own campaigns. They are designers, but they're also multidisciplinary creatives. Mary Kate and Ashley are also celebrities. They're also multidisciplinary creatives. So is Travis Scott, and so is Kim Kardashian. We all start doing things, and then through our creative journey, we develop. And if I look at Saint Laurent, Saint Laurent, celebrity brand, I mean, it uses Hollywood all the time. It has had famous designers. It's in popular culture. It dresses stars. I would say the San Ra or let's say Burberry or whatever, is far more of a celebrity affiliated than the Row is. And I don't think anyone buys the Row because they love to watch Fuller House.

[Jens Greed]

No, but they do love. They do love Full House. Have you ever watched it?

[Kim Kardashian]

I actually used to watch Fuller House when I was a kid, and I do actually. I love cinema. Right. I'm obsessed with Full House.

[Lauren Sherman]

Yeah.

[Kim Kardashian]

But what I think it comes down to is that I think brands have. Some have more integrity, some brands have less integrity, and that's really the red line. Travis Scott has a lot of integrity in his process. It doesn't matter where he comes from. Teddy has a lot of integrity in his process. It doesn't really matter what his starting point was. So for me, I think it's about integrity. And fame. I think generally is really a poor thing to trade, because if celebrity could simply sell anything, and that is a gross simplification, everybody would like to. Or let's say, conclusion people like to get to. Well, if so, celebrities would really dictate the outcome of our elections. And we all know they don't. Right?

[Jens Greed]

Well, arguably they did because Donald Trump is also a celebrity, but I know what you mean.

[Lauren Sherman]

Yes.

[Jens Greed]

Yeah. If they could influence more celebrities. Endorse the Kamala. Yeah.

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah. And it's like every brand that worked with big celebrity would turn around their fortunes, and all of these brands that celebrity has dreamt up over the years would all be successful. And I just don't think consumers are that stupid. I think just because you love someone's voice or acting ability, I don't think that means you love their yoga leggings or cold brew. So I think it's a simplification, and I think the cultures move past it. And I think we look at things that are created with integrity, and a known person can have more integrity in their creative process than a corporate entity, which sitting in strategy meetings and trying to figure out what consumers would like through algorithms, research, data. I don't think that's any more pure, you know, just because there isn't a person behind it. In fact, I think people today like to understand that there is a person behind it, and that person has a point of view that they're trying to bring. Bring out.

[Jens Greed]

So that. That makes sense to me. And you're using the word integrity. The thing about you that I've been trying to figure out is, like, what is your pattern? Like, all. All investors, all brand builders, people who own, own. Like, if you look at, like, a Les Wexner or a Mickey Drexler or people who kind of came several. Several generations before you, but what made them successful, they had a particular way of doing things. And so the thing that you tend to identify is, like, the way Les Wexner worked is that he looked at trends in the market and was able to quickly adapt them for the masses. So, like, he looked at trends in the sort of advanced consumer market. If. If he went on a trip to Europe, everyone was wearing butter yellow. He bought a bunch of that stuff, came back and told his team, we need to make A bunch of stuff in butter yellow. And that was in the 80s, the way to. To turn it. But you're saying you're sort of method of identifying what the culture wants is looking for people who can bring integrity to a product. And that is what resonates.

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah. I look for an aesthetic and a worldview that I can help make a better business. And I saw that in Kim. I see that in Eric. I have saw the same thing in Greg with the Elder Statesman. An aesthetic that doesn't look like anything else. And that's honestly what gets me excited. I get incredibly excited. I can't help myself. But then get involved, and I see an aesthetic that I just can't place anywhere else. And I hope to be involved with brands that when you look at it across the board, at the span of my career, they are, you know, they are easily distinguishable. They are perfect for what they are. Right. And no one else had exactly that point of view. And I think that when we came out with skims, it was a different point of view on a category. It was a different way to. To market and build that category. It was a different view of product. And I was extremely excited about helping Kim make that vision a reality. And I'm equally excited now, a week after we opened the first Elder Statesman flagship in New York to help build an American luxury brand that has this tension between Malibu Surfer and Kim, cashmere and luxury and Americana. And we're opening actually another store for elder tomorrow in Aspen. And so I'm equally excited about that. I get excited about creativity, but going back to the Les Wexner, I think that was a very different era where information was very hard to come by. And some of these retailers, they. They were able to build this format, and it was like a way of educating the customer regionally through the malls about what was happening in the world. I don't think that plays a part anymore because we all have access to the same information at the same time. I think Mickey Drexler is an unbelievable merchant and perhaps closer, a little bit closer to how I work, because I feel that Mickey is a great customer of his own brand. And that's really the key to everything I do, and I preach it all the time, which is I tell people, stop thinking like a company. Just tell everybody that works for you not to think like a company. The company and the customer are not the same thing you are as long as you think like a customer. And I try to push everybody to go after things that gets us excited. So going back to The North Face we wanted to make North Face jacket. We're excited about it. We're the customer, what we are making. And if you love what you do, chances are someone else will love it too. But I can't stand this kind of over strategizing, trying to figure out what someone else would want separate from what you want. I say to everybody all the time, what do you want to pay for? Would you buy this if you didn't work here? Would you pay this for it? Would you know about it? And I think that goes from adult shade to a North Face. I think that goes from do I want to see Lana Del Rey at Valentine, et cetera. Everything we do is out of Are we excited about doing this? Are we excited about seeing it? Am I excited about buying it? And I think businesses where we all feel like we're the customer and we act like we're the customer and we create it for ourselves, it tends to do well. And if we don't do well, at least we love it.

[Unknown Speaker]

When it comes to hiring, don't search for great talent, Match with them. Thanks to Indeed. Indeed is their matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Just go to indeed.comradio right now and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility, go to indeed.comradio and tell them you heard about them from this podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Jens Greed]

Are you a micromanager? No, I don't mean that negatively. I'm just curious.

[Kim Kardashian]

I mean like founder mode, trying to turn micromanaging into something like sexy. No, I think there's elements.

[Jens Greed]

No, I mean, I think micromanaging can be very helpful. It can slow things down, but it can also keep the quality up if you do it in the right way, if you optimize it.

[Kim Kardashian]

No, I'm not a micromanager. The speech I give every single person who works directly for me is that I'm a basketball coach and I'm going to put my starting five on the floor. But you can't count on me running in and sinking it free, you know, in the fourth quarter. But I'm going to deal with you in the off season. So I spend most of my time trying to build a team of people that are as like minded and competitive as I am, but hopefully better at the individual tasks than I would ever do.

[Jens Greed]

I want to talk a bit about product itself, but quickly. How much do you think you work with your wife Emma, who is helps run skims with you, also CEO, right, Of Good American. You have your investors in Greg Chait's elder statesman, as you mentioned, you all are still connected to Frame. Do you think that having Emma. Cause I've interviewed both of you, I've written about your relationship. Do you think that having that person who is your life partner and someone you trust implicitly partnering with you on all this stuff, do you think that that is a big, I mean, obviously it's a key to your success, but do you think that's like supercharged, you all being able to work with so many different creative people like you work with Kim Kardashian, you work with Greg, you work with Eric, all these different people. And it does feel like a real potent, like concentrated power between the two of you because you worked so closely.

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah, I'd say that all of the people you just mentioned have been friends. First. Eric is my best friend in the whole world. I'm godfather to children, he's godfather to mine. I couldn't dream of not having him in my life, both as a friend and as a business partner. When it comes to our spouse, I mean, we all work with our partners. You know, I'm lucky enough not to have to do too much of the, you know, who's picking up sunny and you know, bringing out the trash. And you know, there's a lot of, you know, everyday things that we don't have to like work out between us because, you know, we have, we're fortunate to have a lot of great help around us. So we all work with our partners. I think that Emma is an exceptional merchant and I think she's exceptional pretty much every single way. I'm very lucky to be married to her. I'm very happy to be working with her. There are elements of our work which overlap. I think we have really. I think the key to our relationship has been working relationship has been that we have defined roles. But I would say the same thing about Eric and I would say the same thing about Kim. You know, I think that there is aspects where Kim, whatever Kim says goes and there's aspects where she would defer to me, you know, And I'd say the same thing about Eric. We have. I think I've been lucky working with friends where we have clear lines of responsibility. And I think that's been a key, you know, And I don't think my relationship with Emma is that different as a work relationship to my relationship with my other partners. I think we've been lucky to treat outside of work and work different, you know, Keep that in mind.

[Jens Greed]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I. I think you also. There's something about. And I don't. You and Eric started work. Eric Torenson, by the way, I was called out by a reader that. A listener that I never say the person's last name. We just talk about people. Like everyone should know. And I'm sure everyone does know Eric, but Eric Torenson. You all started working together, first career.

[Kim Kardashian]

Oh, yeah. I was 20. I was 21 years old.

[Jens Greed]

I do think there is something about a relationship and. And you also worked with Emma and I. I started. I met my husband at work. There's something about a relationship that begins as a working relationship and then gets personal, whether that's just a friendship or romantic or whatever that is. There is such an intense amount of trust on both sides. And you can go back and forth working with the person and having a personal relationship with them because you've gained the trust. I think what's harder for people is being friends with someone and then going into a working environment. I don't know. And you've done both. But I do think that starting as a working relationship and then it becoming personal in some way, the level of trust there is so. Is just so great because you have to respect that person on a professional level, and then you learn about them on a personal level. And so you can volley back and forth in a way that if you start personal and then go into. You might be surprised about how someone operates.

[Kim Kardashian]

Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I pride myself on being a good person partner. And what that means is that I'm very consistent. I'm very, very consistent in the way I approach things, and I'm very emotionally consistent. I believe that it's better to make a decision, whatever that is, right or wrong, than not make a decision. So if you. Lauren loves red, then I love blue. Blue is to say I'm right. And is that the most important thing? If you really care about red so much, have red. I'll take blue next time. And that's kind of my attitude to all my working relationships. It's just highly pragmatic. Maybe because I'm Swedish. It's kind of in me to approach life like that. But if you really care about red, I can't say red is wrong. Go for it. And if I have a strong point of view, I'll put it across. But ultimately, if that's what you want, then I'll go with it. We'll see how it works out. Not the end of the world.

[Jens Greed]

Do you read a lot of management books? And then we'll get off the MBA track.

[Lauren Sherman]

I'm just curious.

[Kim Kardashian]

I think I used to when I was younger. Yeah, not so much anymore.

[Jens Greed]

You could probably write one at this point.

[Kim Kardashian]

Maybe one day. Maybe one day. I have way, way too much things I want to accomplish to stop and write a book about my philosophy.

[Jens Greed]

So what is your philosophy on product? Because, as you know, I wrote this book with Chantal Fernandez about Victoria's Secret, and it's a really interesting category. And I want to get into category specifics with you.

[Kim Kardashian]

But.

[Jens Greed]

But the thing that. What we sort of determined when Les bought Victoria's Secret for, I think it was a mil. It was a million in cash or 4 million in stock or something. Really small amount of money in. In the early 80s, the category really needed to be disrupted. And he disrupted it by scaling this concept and providing, like, cute bras and underwear for people at school. The thing that he never really focused on, though, and as you know, it's very hard to make an underwire bra in particular, it has a lot of different parts. But the quality of the product wasn't the thing or the comfort of the product or anything to do with how the product made the person, how it felt on their body. It wasn't what was driving him. It was that he would often use this Revson quote, we sell hope not help. Like, whether or not the bra actually fit the person wasn't the point. The point was that he was inspiring them to buy it. I would argue that the reason that Skims has been so successful is, yes, because you have amazing marketing. Because you have. It looks cool. You have an amazing person sort of creating the signature idea or personality of the brand. But what it comes down to is the product wins on. Like, even if people say they don't like certain parts of Skims, they own it because it's. It's the best thing on the market right now. And sometimes for me, it feels like the only thing on the market. And we were asked quite a bit when we were being interviewed for the book, like, what has changed about the way the consumer is right now. And we kept using this phrase, the product is the marketing. I'm curious if you believe that and if you do, like, how important is the quality and the fit of the product for what you all do compared to all the other components that make it so special?

[Kim Kardashian]

Oh, I think product is number one, number two, and number three. And then comes everything else. I think product is everything. I think the consumer is so much more educated today than they were in the 80s. I would also say we are comfort seekers today. I mean, try to try a pair of jeans on from 80s or 90s, or try a sweatshirt on. We have put comfort as number one or number two of our, let's say, decision tree, like our purchasing decision. So that's one thing. The other thing is consumers have so much more choice today. And what drives business more than any endorsement, than any form of marketing is actually what consumers are telling each other. And I'm not talking about influencers that are paid or that whole network of bringing awareness. That's just another form of advertising. Essentially. I'm talking about consumers one to one. The way that we share with our friends, the way that we share on a text group or a chat or a DM or something, we forward or something, we try and we bring our friend and we say, look at this. So I think that we have so much information and we're so discerning with how we spend our money today that there is simply no way to build a brand without exceptional product today. It's just I cannot see that. And when I failed, and I failed many times, it's always because the product hasn't lived up to its, to its promise, always.

[Jens Greed]

How do you measure success? Is it sell through? Is it engagement with a product? Like what are. Obviously you need your revenue and your ET to be good, but what do you. I'm sure there's products that you all launched that aren't the best sellers in the world, but that you're really proud of. How do you kind of overall assess this stuff and say this was worth doing?

[Kim Kardashian]

It's a combination of all of the things. I mean, first of all, you know, if dollars is the only measure of success, I would make very different decisions than I made in my career. I have never, and I've said this before, which is if money is the goal, it's actually very rarely the outcome. And so your starting point has to be you want to create something that solves the need for yourself or something you're excited about. I think that's the starting point in everything. So that's really. I think if I wasn't proud of what we were doing, then I wouldn't feel successful regardless of what, you know, what dollars comes with it. So that's my starting point for everything I get involved with. Doesn't mean we always get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we don't get there, but that's always the starting point. As a company, you have to measure success based on what is my expectations versus the result was my expectations, what's my financial expectations, what's my expectations of growth, you know, what's my expectations of the type of organization and the strength, not of the individual product or collection. There'll be hits, there'll be misses. But what's our consistency? What's our consistency in creating great stuff?

[Jens Greed]

Looking back at the launch of Skims in 2019, it's no surprise that those first few drops sold out. But the success was so swift. A did you. Because you had launched several brands already prior to this. Obviously, Kim is one of the most famous people in the world. She may have been the most famous at that moment. But how did you manage that, like quick success? Because I don't. I can't imagine that anyone would anticipate it would. It would scale up so quickly and so efficiently. It's not like you had to do a bunch of paid marketing to make this happen. It just happened.

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah. I think that the success became very quickly. A positive spiral. Brand can get into negative spiral. Into positive spiral. It got into positive spiral. I think that people liked the look. There was almost a sneaker like urgency around the brand. It took us by total surprise. It took us years where our supply and demand was even somewhat evenly matched. So it took a long time. So in short, no, we didn't manage it. It's incredibly hard to manage. Product takes a long time to make and ship, so it took us years for that to start balancing out. But you can't. So you can't anticipate it. You really, you really cannot. You have to try to do your best. I think under supply and demand to some extent is not a bad thing. But if that gap is too large, obviously disappoint people and you turn them off. And I don't want that either. And I think one of the most common misconceptions about Skims to this day. We have millions of customers and we speak to millions more and we get the feedback. I didn't go to Skims because I thought it was sold out and A lot of friends of mine still thinks that something they love is still sold out. It might have been in inventory now for a year or two, but just because we were so consistently out of stock for a long time. So I'm super grateful for that start. It was totally chaotic and it took us a moment, more than a moment could have. Long time found.

[Unknown Speaker]

So it's a new year, 2025, and you're thinking, how am I going to make this year different? How am I going to build something for myself? But where do I start? Shopify is how you're going to make it happen. And here's how. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale. The best time to start your new business is right now. Get your store up and running easily with thousands of customizable templates. No coding or design skills required. All you need to do is drag and drop. Their powerful social media tools let you connect all your channels and create shoppable posts and help you sell everywhere people scroll. What happens if you don't act now? Will you regret it? What if someone beats you to the idea? Don't kick yourself when you hear this again in a year because you didn't do anything. Now with Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. Sign up for your $1 per month trial [e-mail] Odyssey podcast. All lowercase. Go to shopify.com Odyssey podcast to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com Odyssey podcast.

Yeah, sure thing. Hey, you sold that car yet?

Yeah, sold it to Carvana.

Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy.

The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency, no interest over 36 months. Yeah, no. Carvana gave me an offer at in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient.

Just like that.

[Kim Kardashian]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

No hassle?

None.

That is super convenient. Sell your car to Carvana and swap.

[Jens Greed]

Hassle for convenience.

[Unknown Speaker]

Pickup fees may apply.

[Jens Greed]

I have a couple more skims questions, but I'm curious to know your thoughts. You're an investor in a luxury brand. You have worked with pretty much every luxury brand in your previous life and some in your current life. There is something going on in the luxury market right now. A sort of, I keep saying, a split between there are these mega luxury brands and then there are fashion brands and it's two different businesses. What do you think is happening with the customers relationship with these big labels? It's obviously changing. And as someone who's been a student of it and in that world for 15, 20 years. Like, what do you think is happening at this point in the cycle?

[Kim Kardashian]

I think there's a few things that are converging. One, it expanded so rapidly over the last four or five years. Some pullback is to be expected. It can't simply continue forever. Secondly, you've spoken about this before. They really price themselves out. They really price themselves out. They felt like they had infinite demand and they raised prices to a degree where it's just really hard to stomach. I think for a lot of aspirational customers other than the super rich. And lastly, it's the industrialization of luxury. And I think that plays a huge part. You asked me earlier, we were talking, I was ranting about my feelings about celebrity brands as a headline. And I said integrity is the defining line. So what is it that we're responding to right now with the role? What are we responding with? Miu Miu and Prada? What are we responding with on the cosmetic side with companies like that? I'm an investor. Investment atelier, for example.

[Jens Greed]

Big fan. Great, great, great wearing it today.

[Kim Kardashian]

So good, great brand. She's done huge. She's just done the most amazing job with her company. I'm so proud of her and happy to be an extremely small part of that. But people are responding to a sense of integrity. The role has integrity. It doesn't feel massive produced. It doesn't feel like everybody has it. It doesn't feel like it was a marketing and distribution plan that was executed to maximize the sales per square foot. You just don't feel it. And I think that Prada and Yumu also has a sense of integrity about them and many other brands. Loewe has a sense of integrity about what he's currently doing. So I've been customers, at least the top of the customer funnel is what I'm saying. I'm not saying the whole customer funnel. I think the world at a whole would still buy all of these brands en masse if the price was lower. But I think the top of the customer funnel is looking for more integrity. And brands that have it seems to be having no issues, but brands that has kind of lost it and feel industrialized and soulless seems to be losing. That's, that's my, my, my, my feeling.

[Jens Greed]

It also feels like the Internet in some ways has flattened the way consumers evaluate brands. So they are evaluating skims in the same way they evaluate one of the luxury brands and the price is different. But it's that equation in their head, is it worth it? And they are Judging it similarly. So when you think of the. When you look at the list of launch metrics, the top performing or list lyst skims is on there with mostly luxury brands and some sports brands because it's about the brand and not the price. One question on this I have for you is one thing that has sort of come to the fore in recent months is this Luxury brands really overstored, which was something I never thought they would do. They opened way too many stores in the hopes to rev up to, you know, the more product you ship, the more revenue you automatically do. The more stores you have, the more sales you have. And that has backfired. And now a lot of these retailers are closing stores. With skims, you have been very slow to open stores in. In my mind, like you. How many stores you all have five or six at this. You just opened a big flagship. It was six. You just opened this big flagship in New York. You could have. If it was another person running this brand, I bet there would be 70 stores at this point. You've been very careful about the rollout. Can you talk a bit about your retail strategy and why you haven't just jumped in? I know it costs a lot of money to open a store, but you have. You have the money you can have.

[Kim Kardashian]

That's not the reason. Going back to the point about luxury brands over stored, so to speak. It's what I said earlier. When money is the mission, it's sometimes not the result. And I think that money became the mission in fashion and at these luxury goods. They used to have other values too, that balanced longevity, brand equity, a feeling that it was hard to come by. You felt special as a customer. And if there's a luxury store from brand A on every single corner in every single city, that will get lost. Right? The money was the mission. So I think it's that simple. You know, with skims, it took a long time. You know, honestly, we were just. It took us so many years to just scale the demand we had online. And by the time we start thinking about stores, I also think there was an expectation, if we can't just open a store, we're opening a store. It's going to be different. It's going to live up to the customer's expectation of what a skim store is. So we spent a lot of time conceptually with that. We then had a test store, a secret test store in Austin for a year. We never publicized. We just wanted to learn what they wanted to buy and how they wanted to move through it. And what was different from online. And it's been the beauty of the whole skims project that Kim and I have been in control of our business and how we want to build it. And there's always a lot of excitement, speculation, why don't you do this? Or when are you going to go public? We never spoken about going public. All I've ever said is, at some point we probably will, but I've never actually spoken about it. And I think with the stores, it's kind of the same thing. We did it when we focused our attention on it. Then we're perfectly happy with having six stores right now. And we think we've landed in this great environment, in this immersive environment where people can experience the whole brand. We're still learning, but at the end of next year, there's going to be a hell of a lot more stores. We're going to open a lot of them because we think we've done it right. Rather than go after, yeah, we've got to maximize the dollars. Let's open stores. Let's open them as quickly as we can. What's our payback period? How cheap can we build them? The money wasn't the mission. The mission was to build an unbelievably exciting, beautiful store wherever we show up. And I believe we've done that. And I'm excited about opening stores all over the country in the coming years.

[Jens Greed]

The first rule of journalism is don't ask two questions in one. But I'm going to do that. I don't know if it's the first rule, but it's definitely a rule. So I'm not going to ask you about the ipo. Someday maybe I'll get the, the filing and, and dig into it. It will all be very excited for you and for. For us to be able to cover that. But two questions. So you are around a billion dollars a year in sales. From what I know, from what has been published, I don't know the exact number. I should have looked that up and sprung it on you today. But what does the next. So you will double in sales at some point. Like, I feel like you don't have to do anything and that would happen. But the first question is, like, what size of a business do you think this is? Because there are a lot of companies and obviously Victoria's Secret in a similar space to you, but also in apparel, whatever that are 6 billion, 7 billion, $8 billion businesses, a lot of people think they're too big and that they need to be smaller. Given the way the consumer buys things today and just the way the market works. So how big do you think this business should be? And b, how do you. What does this next phase of growth look like? You mentioned stores, but what else do you do to keep the integrity there but continue to allow for the growth that is like generally natural like there. Like I said, there's not probably you wouldn't really have to change anything and the, the business would keep growing for a good amount of time because all the, all the tools are in place. But I'm sure you will change things. So, so two pronged question. One is like what how big do you think this business should be? And two, what do you do in the next year or two to manage what is inevitable growth?

[Kim Kardashian]

Pierre Ibrussel, who is the CEO of Tory Brad but he used to be big fan, so am I and used to be the chairman of LVMH Fashion. He once told me maybe 10, 12 years ago, he gave me one of the best pieces of advice when I asked him what was the key to success at lvmh. He said we transform on the way up because once we plateau, it's already too late. And at the time that made a ton of sense to me. So I don't exactly know how we are going to transform. I hope we try to be in constant slow evolution of what we do and how we do it. I try not to think about what it can be. Kenny Rogers is not a philosopher, but a country artist saying, never count the money while you're sitting at the table. There'll be plenty enough time to count them when the dealing is done. So I don't try to figure out where we can go. I try to figure out what's more in the more immediate future. But what I would say is I'm really trying to get it with Kim to define a new category of retail that sits between lounge and intimate and in the way that we need to build our wardrobes today that has a big, big room to fill. And I think when you create your own category in retail, the sky is really the limit. And 15 years ago or 10 years ago, someone would have asked how many more black leggings can do the lemon sell. I remember seeing with Ramon Rafini at the Mercer 15, maybe 12 years ago talking about Montclair and he told me, I wake up every morning in a cold sweat thinking how many more black puffer jackets can I sell? It turned out he could sell a lot more. So, yeah, I'm more focused on creating a new category in retail and see where that takes us. The brand resonates globally. We have as much traffic from outside of the United States as we have in the us so we have a lot of opportunity in physical retail expansion both domestically and internationally. We have category expansion opportunities. We're very early in our journey with men, so I think we have no shortage of levers to pull over the next couple of years. Right now, in the more immediate future, it is expanding our stores in the US and hopefully we'll have a couple of big flagship in Europe. I can't exactly know when they're opening. Depends a bit on the planning process, but hopefully in 26 that should be the case. And we are next year starting really to build an infrastructure in Europe that can start delivering to demand we have from the region. You have so much more demand than we are fulfilling in Europe right now. And we really need to put some infrastructure on the ground. So that's kind of our focus for now.

[Jens Greed]

Jens, this was so fun.

[Kim Kardashian]

Thank you for having me.

[Jens Greed]

Thank you for taking the time.

[Kim Kardashian]

I told you I wanted to be on your podcast because this is one of the few podcasts that I listened to religiously. That's why I emailed you and said, put me in coach.

[Lauren Sherman]

Put me in too much pressure.

[Jens Greed]

Well, it was great. I'm so happy to have you. Next time you come on, maybe you can come on a Monday and we can just riff on the news.

[Kim Kardashian]

I love it. Anytime. Anytime you want.

[Jens Greed]

Okay, great.

[Kim Kardashian]

Thank you so much.

[Jens Greed]

Have a great holiday. I hope you guys get to relax a little bit.

[Kim Kardashian]

Same same for you. Enjoy.

[Jens Greed]

Thank you.

[Lauren Sherman]

Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck, hosted by Lauren Sherman.

[Jens Greed]

That's me.

[Lauren Sherman]

Our executive producers are John Kelly, co founder of Puck, Ben Landy, executive editor of Puck, Gabby Grossman, Director of Editorial operations at Puck, and Bob Tabador, executive producer at Odyssey. Edited, mixed and mastered by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, including J.D. crowley, Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddie Sprung, Kaiser, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schupf and Kurt Court.