When writer Max Berlinger interviewed Kim Kardashian, he learned her motivation for starting and growing Skims, the shapewear brand that hit the Inc. 5000 this year. We get into all of it on this week’s ‘From the Ground Up.’

BY ANNABEL BURBA, EDITORIAL FELLOW @ANNIEBURBA

Kim Kardashian. Photo: Getty Images

For Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims, cheeky marketing–pun intended–is a key to success.

Kardashian, a reality TV and social media star, founded the Los Angeles-based brand with Jens and Emma Grede in 2017. Over the past three years, Skims has grown by 438 percent, reaching a revenue of almost $713 million in 2023. It’s now valued at $4 billion.

Max Berlinger, who interviewed Kardashian over Zoom for this year’s Inc. 5000 issue, tells From the Ground Up that she has a classic entrepreneurial story: after failing to find shapewear in the market that was both sculpting and comfortable, she made it herself.

But her real innovation with Skims, Berlinger argues, was shedding the garment’s “old granny” reputation and making shapewear sexy, young, and for all types of body and skin colors.

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In the past, he says, shapewear was “something that’s meant to hide your body, something that’s almost shameful.” Kardashian marketed Skims as the opposite–instead of shameful, “it’s celebratory.” It’s something you can wear under your clothes or, if you want, as clothes themselves.

According to Berlinger, Kardashian’s favorite Skims product is also the brand’s least granny-like: the nipple bra.

In the product’s launch video, Kardashian, dressed in a skin-tight Skims set and nerdy glasses, jokes that the nipple bra is her answer to climate change: “I’m not a scientist, but I do believe everyone can use their skill set to do their part. That’s why I’m introducing a brand new bra with a built-in nipple so no matter how hot it is, you’ll always look cold.”

As chief creative officer, Kardashian isn’t afraid of being “cheeky but sexy and playing with that duality,” Berlinger says.

The brand hired former Nike executive Andy Muir as CFO in 2022 and raised $270 million in funding last year, which made many speculate that Skims is eyeing an IPO soon. Jens Grede, the CEO, told Berlinger that “Skims deserves to be a public com­pany, but we’re not in a rush.”

Either way, Berlinger thinks Kardashian will remain involved in the brand.

“If I were Kim, I’d stay until they kicked me out,” he says. “Especially if it was printing money the way it’s doing right now.”

To hear more about Berlinger’s interview with Kardashian, listen to the full episode of From the Ground Up using the player above. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to audio.

What follows is a full raw transcript of the episode.

Ransom: I am Inc. executive editor Diana Ransom.

Lagorio-Chafkin: And I’m editor-at-large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.

Ransom: This is From the Ground Up.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Today’s episode: Let’s Talk About Skims.

Ransom: So, this is our latest episode from our Inc. Feature Stories series, where we talk about one of our most fascinating recent pieces with the writer who reported it. So I wanted to bring in Max Berlinger who is the writer of a story about SKIMS and Kim Kardashian. This was part of our Inc. 5,000 package. And it’s amazing because, to be honest, Kim has not had the best track record in terms of running fast-growing companies. So the fact is, SKIMS is on the list this year, and it’s dynamic, and she has a great story, and Max wrote a great piece, so we wanted to talk all about it.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah, so this company grew like what was the percentage growth? What was the revenue?

Ransom: Well, it was number 1,168 on this year’s list, and the revenue quintupled over three years.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow.

Ransom: So their revenue actually was, in 2023, $713 million.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Wow, okay.

Ransom: So people are buying a lot of shapewear.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I know that people love SKIMS. And it’s not just shapewear, it’s sweatshirts, it’s awesome T-shirts, right? Yeah.

Ransom: That’s the brilliant thing about it is that they’ve been growing, so they’re entering into new markets. So yeah, they’ve been growing, and that’s the story we wanted to tell is it’s not just shapewear anymore. It’s not just Kim Kardashian plastering her boudoir all over… Is it boudoir? Her body all over billboards.

The company is growing significantly into other avenues. You know, there’s clothing. Not just shapewear, clothing. They’ve gotten into menswear, they’ve gotten into interesting collabs that I wanted to talk about.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I know that the story that Max wrote explores can SKIMS exist without Kim, right? Can it move past her? But let me ask you what’s going to be on everyone’s mind right now. Did Max talk to Kim Kardashian?

Ransom: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And she gave him a lot of time. So, very gracious about her actually, because initially apparently there was 15 minutes, and then she was like, “Well, hey, I’m talking to Inc. Magazine. Let’s give him a little bit more time.”

Lagorio-Chafkin: Aw, that’s great.

Ransom: I know.

Lagorio-Chafkin: All right, well, I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

Ransom: So let’s get into it. He started off the conversation by telling us a little bit more about SKIMS’s origin story.

Berlinger: Yeah, her story is that Kim is a fashion plate. She wears different designer clothes all the time and she says that shapewear has been a part of her life the whole time.

And she even referenced, in the story we mentioned it briefly, there’s an episode when I think she’s either pregnant or just had one of her children, she’s wearing shapewear, and her brother-in-law walks in on her and is shocked to see her in this sort of crazy… not crazy getup, but just sucked in and wearing shapewear. And she said as she tried different designers, she wasn’t finding what she wanted on the market, which is a classic entrepreneurial-

Lagorio-Chafkin: Yeah. “I have a problem. Let me solve it for myself.”

Berlinger: Exactly. And she says, I mean how apocryphal this is or not, but she said she would dye them herself with tea bags or she would take things and she would cut them up because one of her jumpsuits only had one leg or whatever, so she was just creating something. She wanted something for herself, and she was very specific about what she wanted, especially in terms with fabric when in shapewear as it’s against your skin so closely and intimately, that’s obviously a really important thing. So she wanted something that kept you sucked in, kept you feeling of a certain shape, but also not uncomfortable, and she wanted it to be soft. But I think her big turning point, or the big innovation here is that she sort of… shapewear had a reputation. I think she calls it old granny.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I was going to say. She kind of took this category that was dusty for all intents and purposes. You know, there were girdles before then. I guess also Spanx.

Ransom: Well, there was Spanx.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Spanx was around.

Ransom: Spanx, if you think about it, it was a huge leap, but it wasn’t changing the aesthetic, right?

Berlinger: Right.

Lagorio-Chafkin: I think what was so-

Ransom: Well, I think what Kim did was she made it cool.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Right.

Berlinger: And she made it outerwear. It’s, I think, interesting that she’s saying you can wear it with a pair of jeans or under a top or a bustier or something. It can be outerwear, it can be innerwear, but yeah, I think she made it sexy. And I think we talk about this in the story. Her body is a big focus of the media. For better or for worse, how her body looks is something that people obsess over. And she toys with that herself. She’s been photographed in Playboy and GQ in different ways. So I think this is a really shrewd move to make her body sort of the central part of her business, and she’s doing it really successfully.

Lagorio-Chafkin: Right. And she’s owning her own body.

Berlinger: Yeah, absolutely. At this point, and we can talk about what the future looks like, but Kim Kardashian and SKIMS are synonymous.

Ransom: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So speaking of her body, I loved the lead of your story. Can you tell us-

Lagorio-Chafkin: I know. I almost did a spit take when I first read that. I was like, “It’s definitely staying in, but oh my God.”

Berlinger: First, I have to say, setting up a call with someone like Kim Kardashian is a whole thing, and you get nervous about it, and you’re given 15 minutes with Kim. Can you do it? I think it was like 8:00 PM Eastern Time or whatever. I was nervous about it to a certain degree, but it was on Zoom.

So she comes on or someone else connects us, and then it’s a blank screen and she says, “I’m here. I’m getting my hair and makeup done.” And........

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