When most people turn 21, their biggest accomplishment is making it to the bathroom to puke, instead of hurling all over the bartender. However, makeup mogul Kylie Jenner accomplished something a bit more impressive. According to Forbes, she is officially the youngest self-made billionaire in history.
How did she do it? Easy. Every time you post a comment underneath a Kylie Jenner article proclaiming that 'nobody cares,' she makes five bucks. Just kidding. Last year, her company Kylie Cosmetics experienced nine per cent revenue growth, thanks to a partnership with Ulta that brought her products into a thousand American stores. The extra capital bumped her business from a $900 million value to one billion, and yes, I'm depressed about my life too, let's get drunk.
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But wait a second, you might ask, isn't the cosmetic industry pretty competitive? Why is Kylie Jenner succeeding so much more than other celebrity makeup moguls? Forbes reporter Natalie Robehmed broke down her winning business plan:
"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 per cent 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."
When asked about her achievement, Kylie told Forbes, "I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future. But [the recognition] feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back." So humble! Some fans congratulated her on the title, while others criticized the "self-made" part: If you're born into an extremely wealthy, famous family, can you really be "self-made"?
On Twitter, Dictionary.com hilariously threw shade at Kylie. "Haven't we gone over this?" they wrote, in response to the Forbes article. "Self-made: Having succeeded in life unaided." (They tweeted something similar last year, when news broke about Kylie's impending billionaire status.)
Of course, this raises the question of whether or not any billionaire is truly "self-made." Doesn't everyone receive some kind of aid? What exactly constitutes aid?
In the replies to the viral tweet, most people took the dictionary's side. One Twitter user snarked, "Born on 3rd base, scores on a wild pitch, celebrated as if she hit a walk-off home run," while another argued, "Everyone gets help to be successful, but the girl was literally handed a fortune, a ton of connections, and instant fame."
But perhaps this person put it best: "There are people who start companies out of their basements, do all their own marketing, and grind day and night, and sell ideas to get investors with no celebrity status or brand awareness. They know the struggle before they make it big. Those folks are self-made."
