Kylie Jenner Says Making Money Had Nothing To Do With Her Starting Kylie Cosmetics
Kylie Jenner may be rolling in some serious dough thanks to her makeup company Kylie Cosmetics, but it’s not the money that keeps her slaying the makeup game.
Instead of going into the entrepreneurial industry thinking that she was going to make loads of money — which she did — the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star launched her beauty line as a way to follow her passion for makeup.
Jenner turned her passion into a billion-dollar empire
Jenner may be the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, but she’s the most successful of all the sisters, including older half-sister Kim Kardashian West.
Since embarking on her beauty business with the launch of Kylie Lip Kits in 2015, the makeup mogul’s net worth, as well as the net worth of her company, has only increased.
Today, Jenner remains the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, even after she sold 51% of Kylie Cosmetics to beauty conglomerate Coty Inc. for $600 million in January 2020.
While she’s definitely made a pretty penny since launching Kylie Beauty, Jenner says that she didn’t create this empire to become mega-rich.
In a 2019 interview with Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, the reality star revealed that she started Kylie Cosmetics as a passion project and says she didn’t expect her love for makeup to turn into one of the biggest beauty empires in the world.
“I don’t really do it to make money or think that far into the future if this is going to be super-successful. I just knew my talents and was passionate about makeup and lips and lipsticks,” Jenner explained. “It’s been a real love of mine for as long as I can remember. I never even knew that you can really turn your passion into a business, you know. I just followed my heart and went with how I felt. Now I just feel so blessed every day to wake up, have fun doing what I love and make a career out of it. It’s amazing!”
Jenner invested her own money to start the company
Though Jenner grew up very well off, being the daughter of famed Olympian Caitlyn Jenner and the subject on reality television since the age of 9, she didn’t have any help getting her makeup company off the ground.
Instead, the makeup mogul invested $250,000 of her own money from past brand sponsorships and deals in 2015 to pay an outside company to produce the first 15,000 of her infamous lip kits.
Of course, that eventually launched into a full-fledged makeup company that is still dominating the beauty industry today.
Though Jenner has accomplished a lot with Kylie Cosmetics over the years, she isn’t done building the brand up to be bigger and better than it is now.
“I see (Kylie Cosmetics) going very far,” Jenner told Forbes in 2019. “I work really hard.”
But even with the massive fortune she currently has, the makeup mogul still puts her heart and soul into everything she does for Kylie Beauty because, like she’s said before, makeup is her passion.
“I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future,” Jenner told Forbes in 2019. “But [the recognition] feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.”
