Industry Expert
Appearances
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I would say it probably started like around March 2020. Once a year, basically for every billionaire, you look at their net worth and reevaluate it in a serious way. So that's when we said, hold on a minute. The pandemic had happened. It was March, April.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Practice social distancing, self-quarantine.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
So beauty valuations across the board were going down. No one was wearing makeup and no one was going out, and so no one needed it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
We realized that the price that Kody spent on it might not be fair market value any longer. And that's when we were looking at the revenues to try to figure out what that half of the company would be worth on the open market.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And we said, we kind of realized that that we had been completely misled about, about the revenues. And that's kind of when we started to question things.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
It was in an investor presentation where it said $177 million is the revenue of the past 12 months, or November 2018 to 2019. And they said that's up 40%. from calendar year 2018. So that means that calendar year 2018 would have had to be like 125 million. And we were led to believe revenues were in the 300 million and growing and growing and growing.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
They had also misled us on profit. So they had said that the margins were around 40% and Kylie was making all of that margin. In reality, I think the margins were around 25%. Then there was the issue of ownership.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
We also learned later that Kris takes 10%.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
They just kind of ignored us or said, we'll get back to you, we'll get back to you, and they never really did. There was not a comment that they gave us on the record.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Everyone was so online because it was a pandemic. People at the time were in such a hate-the-rich mindset. Like, at the time, the Kardashians were probably, like, Instagramming from their mansions, and we were all stuck in our little houses making banana bread, you know? Forbes shows how many people read a story, at least in those days, and it was just like... It was kind of like a rocket ship.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I can say millions. It was definitely the most read story of that year, I want to say, on Forbes, which was crazy. It really started blowing up and people started aggregating it and especially kind of more tabloidy places started aggregating it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And I think one thing that was crazy was it wasn't just on Twitter. It wasn't just friends and people who are interested in gossip. The markets moved. Cody's stock dropped 13 percent. But it was wild that the reception was that wide. And eventually Kylie responded. That's coming up after the break.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And then period spelled out and a literal period. And it's interesting because obviously we had reached out to the Jenner camp so many times about this. Here's another tweet. I can name a list of 100 things more important right now than fixating on how much money I have. Which, like, I'd agree with her at that time there were about a million. But that doesn't make the story false.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Did Cody say anything? We reached out and they wouldn't comment beyond what was in the documents. You would think that if there was a discrepancy like that, Cody, for its own stock price, would want to walk us through and then correct us so that this didn't go live.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
All of us just need to have a bigger conversation about the beauty standards that we're setting. I don't want my daughter to do the things I did. I wish I'd never touched anything to begin with.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
This isn't the end for me. Like, I have so many more products, so many more things I need to come out with that I'm so excited about, so many more collections in the future. And yeah, maybe one day pass this on to Stormy when she's into it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
We got a trademark two years before it launched. So it was way before when I was like, mom. Finally, I put my foot down and I was like, this is what I want.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I just don't want to do rose gold anymore. I was going to do rose gold and now I just feel like I need to do white. I didn't hear anything you just said. It was a lot of compliments, yeah.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I was confused because there were a lot, the headlines were saying that she was, you know, self-made.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I am an editor, a business insider, but I was formerly a writer at Forbes covering entertainment and billionaires.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
In November 2019, Kylie Cosmetics sold to Coty, the international beauty conglomerate, for a valuation of around $1.2 billion. She sold a 51% stake for $600 million. And I think that our initial reaction at Forbes was huge. It was so exciting. We were right. It was an incredible moment. This company that she built is worth over a billion dollars. This public company proved it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And like everyone in California, myself included, she talks in terms of vibes.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
If If you hadn't written that story that was like, she's a billionaire, this is a huge business, would Cody have bought the company for over a billion dollars?