How much is Kim Kardashian worth?
| Net Worth: | $1.5 Billion |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Media Personality |
| Date of Birth: | October 21, 1980 (age 42) |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 5 ft 1 in (1.57 m) |
About Kim Kardashian
When she was Paris Hilton’s BFF, Kim could be found in any paparazzi shots of the hotel heiress, but thanks to a “leaked” sex tape and perhaps artful genius, she has since leveraged her celebrity into a billion dollar brand. Kim Kardashian is a television personality, social media influencer, and successful business woman. She has had a fantastic trajectory from somewhat strange beginnings, and though coming from an enormously successful and famous family, Kim has done well to find success independently as a self-made woman.
The most famous Kardashian went from a reality TV show to having over 73 million followers on Twitter and 331 million followers on Instagram, as well as allegedly having had Donald Trump’s personal phone number at one time. Though they come as a group, Kim Kardashian is undoubtedly the most famous of the Kardashian-Jenner family, and she has made it on to several “Most Influential People” lists, including Time magazine’s.
Kim Kardashian first got a hint of what it’s like to be a celebrity when she appeared on Paris Hilton’s mid 2000s reality show, The Simple Life. Believe it or not, Kim was Hilton’s personal stylist at the time but things were about to change for the upcoming star in the making. She began to get an increase in popularity but it wasn’t until the leak of her sex tape with Ray J, when she suddenly became extremely famous. It is rumored that Kim’s mother, Kris Jenner, had encouraged the leaked tape, although these claims have been denied.
Nevertheless the tape leaked in 2007, five years after it was recorded, which coincided with the first season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. The first episode famously sees Kim nervous to go on the Tyra Banks show, which is a far cry from the successful and influential business woman she is today. Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which followed the family members lives, had viewers attending business meetings and going on vacation close up and personal. It was shockingly successful considering a seemingly flimsy plot and aired from October 14, 2007 up until just June 20, 2021, with a total of 241 episodes.
Despite the show being periodically panned by critics, it earned a massive global audience and the Kardashian-Jenner family can likely trace a couple of billion dollars from spinoff business ventures coming from the show. When it comes to leverage, this business family may be the best the world has ever known. There was also a spinoff shows, like Kourtney & Kim Take Miami, which lasted for three seasons; part of which was promoting their fashion boutique brand, Dash.
In 2014, famously Kim posed nude for the magazine, Paper. The day of release, Paper’s website received more than 15 million views. Though you might think that Kim was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the shoot, as it was no doubt extremely lucrative for the magazine, she did it completely for free. Apparently out of the excitement of working with the celebrated photographer, Jean-Paul Goude. Kim is said to have stripped down completely naked spontaneously, in the moment, and that it was not planned. It made people who didn’t even pay attention to her do a double take and it, again, advanced her brand.
In the mid 2010s, most of Kim’s income came from endorsing products on social media. She was being paid up to $300,000 per post, whether it was on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. She promoted everything from Coca-Cola, to teeth whitening kits through her social media channels, and while her rates for promoting products are at an all time high, somewhere in the region of $800,000 per social media posts, she has earned far more from her solo and joint business ventures.
One of her most successful projects was her app, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, released in 2014, it made over $20 million, according to Forbes, and it would famously help Kanye pay off his debt. Hollywood isn’t her only app that she has released either, she also released Kimoji the following year.
In 2015, Kim released Selfish, a coffee table book full of selfies and photos of herself with celebrity friends. A limited edition of the book sold out within a minute when it went up online. However, her social media posts, apps, books, TV appearances, even her clothing lines, and so on, is not how Kim has become so rich.
Kim Kardashian is at the forefront of what I have come to call “The Great Celebrity Leverage”. Celebrities who are leveraging their celebrity into business and entrepreneurship to bring us brands from people who we can trust and enjoy wearing and using in our daily lives. Kardashian has made around $1 billion dollars from her beauty line, KKW Beauty, as well as her self tanning products. She also founded Skims, a Spanx competing product, in 2018.
Other celebrity brands that I consider epitomize this are Dr. Dre‘s Beats by Dre and Rihanna‘s beauty brand, Fenty. Both were sold to massive conglomerates.
In what was the largest acquisition in Apple’s history. Apple Inc. acquired Beats for $3 billion in cash and stock, in 2014. And if I am not mistaken Bernard Arnault through LVMH acquired 50% of Fenty, in 2017 or 2018. In 2021, the company posted revenues of $5 billion dollars. LVMH also bought 50% of rapper Jay-Z’s champagne brand Armand de Brignac.
On June 29, 2020, Coty Inc acquired 20% of Kim Kardashian West’s beauty brand, KKW Beauty for $200 million dollars. The acquisition valued the company at $1 billion dollars and, after the deal, Kardashian still owned about 72% of the company worth a value of $720 million. Kardashian is the largest shareholder and co founder of Skims along with British businesswoman, Emma Grede. Kim owns an estimated 35 percent of the company after having leveraged her celebrity into “the next generation of underwear, loungewear and shapewear.”
Summing-Up
While some may say that she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, this is hardly true at all. Kim has triumphed surprising hardships and traversed the business world like almost no one else. She has built an empire and continues to work every day even if it seems like she’s “not doing anything”.
