6th April, 2021
By Taiwo Okanlawon
American Reality TV star, Kim Kardashian has been officially declared a billionaire by Forbes magazine.
The rating blog made the pronouncement on Tuesday, saying the media personality now has a net worth of $1 billion — an increase from $780 million in October last year.
“When Kim Kardashian West was first mentioned in the pages of Forbes in 2011, it was simply a tally of her Twitter followers: 6.6 million, just below Barack Obama and just above Ashton Kutcher. Five years later, she graced the cover of Forbes thanks to her booming mobile game, which helped her earn $51 million that year. Now, she officially joins the World’s Billionaires list for the first time,” Forbes says in a blog.
Forbes attributed the feat to Kim’s booming businesses — KKW Beauty and Skims — as well as earnings from reality television and endorsement deals and a number of smaller investments.
Kim founded KKW Beauty in 2017 following the success of Kylie Cosmetics, owned by Kylie Jenner, her younger sister.
The company continued to pull the strings shortly after witnessing an expansion the following year during which it raked in a total of $100 million.
She thereafter launched Skims in 2019 and leveraged on her huge social media following to promote the business.
The 40-year-old sold 20 percent of KKW Beauty to Coty for $200 million last year, which put the value of her company at $1 billion — although Forbes said the figure was “a little bloated.”
“The rest of Kardashian West’s fortune sits in cash and investments, including real estate. Every year since 2012, she has earned at least $10 million pretax, by Forbes’ count, thanks to paychecks from ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’, endorsement deals, and endeavors like the aforementioned mobile game and her now-defunct Kimoji app,” Forbes said.
“She’s also got three properties in Calabasas, northwest of Los Angeles, and a portfolio of blue-chip investments, including shares of Disney, Amazon, Netflix, and Adidas that her soon-to-be ex-husband Kanye West gifted her for Christmas in 2017.
“But it’s the companies that she has launched herself, and grown with the typical Kardashian flare for self-promotion, that lands her on the World’s Billionaires list.”
Forbes had in 2019 named Jenner the world’s youngest self-made billionaire but later withdrew the status, citing discrepancies in her actual net worth.