A few days ago, Magazine TIME named Skims as one of the 100 most influential companies of 2023. On its cover, an all-powerful Kim Kardashian appeared, the well-known founder of the firm – which began by focusing on intimate clothing and shapewear, and later also included swimsuits, t-shirts and dresses, and to be the new official underwear partner of the NBA—, wearing a total look in black leather that marked its already characteristic and omnipresent silhouette. It is in the third paragraph of that article when the name of the Grede couple appears for the first time, specifically, when the prosperous numbers behind the brand appear: “Founded at the end of 2019, Skims earned $500 million last year, a 25% more than projected and 80% more than what he earned in 2021, 90% more than the previous year. So far, 2023 has been a weak year for underwear sales, but a buoyant one for Skims. CEO Jens Grede, who co-founded the company with his wife Emma and [Kim] Kardashian says sales of her intimate apparel increased 86% year over year.”
Until now, Jens and Emma Grede have remained in a discreet (although very profitable) background to the flashes that always point to the Kardashian family. With a more business than media profile, they have granted interviews to Financial Times, to Guardian oa The Cut. Emma Grede appears in 84th place on the list Forbes call self-made women 2023. Recently, his profile has become more popular after his participation as a guest jury in the last seasons of the American program Shark Tankwhich in Spain was translated as Trading with sharks, where a group of aspiring entrepreneurs present their business ideas to a panel of investors, who tend to destroy them. In your Instagram, in which she has accumulated half a million followers, she has photographs with the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, or with former President Barack Obama, as well as affectionate snapshots with her husband and the four children they share. Jens Grede’s Instagram account, on the other hand, is private and barely exceeds 1,000 followers. In his description you can read: “I like popular culture.”
The Gredes do not hide or hide what their work consists of, but, precisely, the success of their work has always been closely linked to that much more European discretion than to constant American self-aggrandizement. Jens Grede is Swedish and 45 years old. Emma Grede is English and she is 41. He was born into a family of artists: his father is the film director Kjell Grede, who was married to the actress Bibi Andersson for 13 years. At the age of 20, Jens left his studies and moved to London. Together with his friend Erik Torstensson he founded the advertising agency specializing in fashion Saturday Group (today renamed Wednesday Agency) in 2003, which was born with the idea of creating new opportunities for stagnant brands. They are the architects, as revealed in Financial Times, Natalie Portman becoming the face of Miss Dior, Beyoncé doing a campaign for H&M or Gwyneth Paltrow signing for Hugo Boss. But their work not only focused on connecting celebrities with brands, Grede and Tortensson also began investing in their own businesses: together they launched the virtual megastore focused on luxury men’s clothing Mr Porter (Tortensson’s partner is, no more no less than Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter). They also launched the clothing brand specialized in leather Frame, which became popular thanks to the collaboration, during its launch in 2012, of friends of the creative couple such as Karlie Kloss or Lara Stone. Years ago, Jens Grede glimpsed the power of the most popular faces of the moment to reach the masses. But it was Emma Grede, his wife, who met the Kardashians.
Emma, for her part, grew up in London and studied Business Administration at the prestigious London College Of Fashion. However, like her husband, she dropped out of school when she got a job as an intern at Gucci and, later, specialized in fashion show production. When she started working at Saturday Group, her future husband’s company already had a portfolio that allowed them to represent “half of London Fashion Week,” according to what they told The Cut. Around 2011, Emma met Kris Jenner during Paris Fashion Week. Jenner, mother and official representative of the Kardashian clan, was looking for new business opportunities for her five daughters. Emma told him about an idea that she had been thinking about for some time: a line of chic jeans that would adapt to all body types and embrace feminine curves. Kris Jenner saw the business, but with her daughter Khloé Kardashian. In 2016, Good American was released, of which the Englishwoman is a co-founder, and which she managed to bill a whopping million dollars on its first day on sale thanks to the maximum of inclusivity that was in Emma’s initial idea, with an applauded size that goes from 34 to 60.
Good American was the beginning of the love story between the Gredes and the Kardashians. And also between the Grede and the United States. In 2017, the couple left the Bloomsbury neighborhood in the British capital and their luxurious house, which was sold for 5.5 million pounds, and settled in Bel Air, in Los Angeles, in a mansion built in 1938 by the American architect Paul R. Williams, the favorite of the stars of the golden age of Hollywood. Some media outlets suggest that his new home cost around $24 million.
The Gredes have not only worked with Khloé and Kim, but have established themselves as trusted partners with a good part of the K clan, including their matriarch. In 2021, the Gredes also launched Safely, a line of household cleaning products with natural ingredients, together with Kris Jenner and, this same year, they launched their first fashion brand with Kylie Jenner, called Khy, with imitation clothing. to leather, which includes dresses for around 125 euros or coats for 245.
Skims, however, continues to be the jewel in the crown in a highly profitable business in which all the founders seem to have made a good profit: Kim Kardashian, on the one hand, has managed to establish herself as a designer and creative director of a brand that claims anticipate women’s needs. Or, put another way, she has made the sash again cool. The Gredes, for their part, have considerably increased their assets, since they have the majority ownership of Skims, while in the United States they have positioned themselves as the Midas kings of the business of creating brands with celebrities who seemed like they could not give more than Yeah.
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