If there’s one thing about Kim Kardashian that we can agree on, it’s that she is serious about her business. Sure, you could argue over whether she’s a feminist icon or the embodiment of unrealistic ideals until the cows come home, but one thing you cannot deny is her entrepreneurial spirit.
I’m biased – I love Kim with my whole soul – but even before she burst onto the reality television scene on E!’s Keeping Up With The Kardashians, she was busy running Dash, a clothing boutique she co-founded with her sisters Kourtney and Khloe in 2006, while also working as a personal stylist for the likes of Paris Hilton.
Since then, she’s built a global empire that spans multiple industries, from gaming to beauty to publishing, amassing billions of dollars of revenue (Forbes declared her a billionaire in 2021) and over 700 international trademarks. Oh, and all the while, she was bringing up a family of four children. Surely, that’s pretty impressive by anyone’s terms, and especially a lot for one woman to achieve before her milestone 43rd birthday?
However, that’s not to say she hasn’t done some dubious deals along the way, and there’s no doubt that some of her business ventures have been better than others. Take the Kardashian Kard in partnership with MasterCard that Kim and her sisters launched in 2010 – a preloaded debit card that was swiftly taken off the market after criticism of sky-high fees. Then there was Kimono, the predecessor to Kim’s shapewear brand SKIMS, which caused global outrage due to the appropriation of the Japanese word.
However, as any great entrepreneur would, Kim has proved herself adaptable, tenacious and resilient, learning from her failures and coming back stronger, with SKIMS reaching a whopping $ 4 billion valuation this year. Seriously impressive.
Furthermore, Kim gave private equity investing a go, joining forces with experienced private equity executive Jay Sammons to start Skky Partners, a new firm focussing on media and consumer investments in 2022. With her billion-dollar business acumen, it makes sense. So, without further ado, we’ve rounded all of her business ventures up and ranked them in order of greatness because, quite frankly, it’s not bad for a girl “with no talent”.