Kylie Jenner appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in July 2018, ranking 27th on the listing of the richest self-made women. At age 20, she was worth $900 million, Kylie who owned a cosmetic company, had become the first female her age, to become a billionaire. This announcement got a lot of tongues wagging, put a lot of pressure on young females around the world and also motivated some to improve their hustle.

However, early this year, Kylie sold half of her cosmetics company in one of the greatest celebrity cash outs of all time. But the deal’s fine print reveals that she has been inflating the size and success of her business for years.

More than a decade into their fame, the Kardashian-Jenners tend to induce eye-rolls and sighs among jaded media consumers. But when it comes to their wealth, even critics of reality TV’s first family are intrigued; the Kardashian-Jenner machine—and the cash it generates—has been the subject of articles, podcasts, even books. But no one cares more about the topic than the family itself, which has spent years fighting Forbes for higher spots on our annual wealth and celebrity earnings lists.


So when the youngest of the clan, Kylie Jenner, sold 51% of her Kylie Cosmetics to beauty giant Coty in a deal valued at $1.2 billion this January, it was a watershed moment for the family. One of the greatest celebrity cashouts of all time, the transaction seemed to confirm what Kylie had been saying all along and what Forbes had declared in March 2019: that Kylie Jenner was, indeed, a billionaire—at least before the coronavirus.

“Kylie is a modern-day icon, with an incredible sense of the beauty consumer,” Coty chairman Peter Harf gushed when announcing the acquisition in November.

But in the deal’s fine print, a less flattering truth emerged. Filings released by publicly traded Coty over the past six months lay bare one of the family’s best-kept secrets: Kylie’s business is significantly smaller, and less profitable, than the family has spent years leading the cosmetics industry and media outlets, including Forbes, to believe.

Of course white lies, omissions and outright fabrications are to be expected from the family that perfected—then monetized—the concept of “famous for being famous.” But, similar to Donald Trump’s decades-long obsession with his net worth, the unusual lengths to which the Jenners have been willing to go—including inviting Forbes into their mansions and CPA’s offices, and even creating tax returns that were likely forged—reveals just how desperate some of the ultra-rich are to look even richer.

“It’s fair to say that everything the Kardashian-Jenner family does is oversized,” says Stephanie Wissink, an equity analyst covering consumer products at Jefferies. “To stay on-brand, it needs to be bigger than it is.”
Based on this new information—plus the impact of COVID-19 on beauty stocks and consumer spending—Forbes now thinks that Kylie Jenner, even after pocketing an estimated $340 million after tax from the sale, is not a billionaire.



As with other Kardashian ventures, Kylie’s business began as a way to cash in on a minor scandal. The youngest of the family, she spent more than a year denying tabloid speculation that she was using lip filler injections before eventually finally fessing up to it in May 2015. Far from embarrassed about being caught in a lie, she—and her shrewd mother, Kris—seized it as a marketing opportunity.

With $250,000 of her earnings from modeling, endorsements and Keeping Up With The Kardashians appearances, Kylie launched her first batch of 15,000 lip kits, consisting of a lip liner and matching lipstick, in November 2015. Thanks to clever Instagram marketing, the $29 kits were gone in less than a minute. “Before I even refreshed the page, everything was sold out,” she later told Forbes.

By the end of 2016, Kylie had dozens of new products and a reputation as a skyrocketing new entrant in the cosmetics industry. A few months after her sister Kim Kardashian West scored...

Read more:

https://thestreetjournal.org/2020/05/forbes-inside-kylie-jenners-web-of-lies-and-why-shes-no-longer-a-billionaire/