Kylie Jenner is the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire, Unless Words Have Meaning

Forbes has declared Kylie Jenner the youngest self-made billionaire ever, because to Forbes, being the daughter of an Olympic gold medalist and the ex-wife of a high-powered LA attorney while appearing on the TV show your sister got for blowing a rapper doesn’t give you any sort of leg up in life.

The beauty of Kylie Cosmetics, which Jenner started in 2015, is its minuscule overhead—and the outsize profits that go straight into Jenner’s pocket. Her empire consists of just seven full-time and five part-time employees. Manufacturing and packaging is outsourced to Seed Beauty, a private-label producer in nearby Oxnard, California. Sales and fulfillment are handled by online merchant Shopify. Her shrewd mother, Kris, takes care of finance and PR in exchange for the 10% management fee she siphons from all of her kids. Marketing is done mostly through social media, where Jenner has a massive following. She announces product launches, previews new items and announces the Kylie Cosmetics shades she’s wearing directly to the 175 million-plus who follow her across Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

I don’t want to make it to obvious that I’m going to vote for Bernie Sanders here, but Kylie Jenner is a billionaire because she puts her name on make-up. Seed Cosmetics does more than just “manufacturing and packaging,” of course. It does everything and makes it seem like Kylie is behind it. They do the same for Kim Kardashian’s KKW line.

Now, my partner has assured me that Kylie’s makeup is really good, and she owns roughly an entire fuckload of it. But it isn’t made by Kylie, it’s made by Seed Cosmetics, who were making things like that liquid lipstick before Kylie Jenner was even on the scene.

“It’s the power of social media,” Jenner says. “I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything.”

That’s the power of having a TV show on E! channel. Do you think she has 128 million instagram followers because she’s insightful or even because she’s hot? I mean, sure, she’s hot, but there are way hotter women with way fewer Instagram followers. As for insightful, well…

Hey, remember when Kylie was cancelled for “cultural appropriation?” Weird how that doesn’t stick when you’re already rich.