What is 'Kylie Swim'? Kylie Jenner starting another swimwear brand, files documents to trademark names
Kylie Jenner is not new to the fashion industry. The American media personality, socialite, model, and businesswoman founded Kylie Cosmetics in 2015. Now, she might be moving into swimwear.
TMZ reported on Monday, May 17, that Jenner has filed legal documents to trademark the names 'Kylie Swim' and 'Kylie Swim by Kylie Jenner'. Per the report, the socialite is looking to market “sunglasses, swim goggles, beach bags, swimwear, cover-ups, headwear, footwear, even towels and outdoor blankets”.
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That being said, Jenner already sells a line of swimwear on her website, the Kylie Jenner Shop. The shop currently lists nine swimming costumes, both one-piece and two-piece. With $250,000 of her earnings from modeling, endorsements, and ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ appearances, Jenner launched her first batch of 15,000 lip kits, consisting of a lip liner and matching lipstick, in November 2015. The company was renamed Kylie Cosmetics in February 2016 and production was increased to 500,000 kits. By the end of 2016, the company's total revenue was over $300 million.
Revenues were reported to be $400 million over the business’s first 18 months. As proof, tax returns detailing $307 million in 2016 revenues and personal income of more than $110 million for Kylie Jenner that year were provided. In 2017, revenues were reportedly up by seven percent to $330 million. “No other influencer has ever gotten to the volume or had the rabid fans and consistency that Kylie has had for the last two and a half years,” an executive at e-commerce platform Shopify, which manages Jenner’s online store, told Forbes at the time.
Jenner is known to be a successful businesswoman but last year, she caught some negative press. Forbes magazine reported that when Jenner sold 51 percent of her Kylie Cosmetics to beauty giant Coty in a deal valued at $1.2 billion in January 2020, some things were not in order. As per the business and finance magazine, Jenner, even after pocketing an estimated $340 million after taxes from the sale, was not a billionaire — something even Forbes had once claimed.
As per the magazine, revenues over a 12-month period preceding the deal was $177 million, according to the Coty presentation. Coty said that sales were up 40 percent from 2018, “meaning the business only generated about $125 million that year, nowhere near the $360 million the Jenners had led Forbes to believe,” the magazine noted. Her skincare line, which launched in May 2019, did $100 million in revenues in its first month and a half, Jenner’s reps said.
The report presented two explanations for the revenue glitch. One, the business quietly fell by more than half in a single year, and that Coty paid up for a “high-growth” brand that was actually a much smaller business than it was just a few years ago. Two, the business was never that big, to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016 to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth.