The steps Kim Kardashian took to create her $1.8 billion empire

Kardashian told Variety that her career as a businesswoman actually dates back to before she appeared on TV.

She told Variety it started in high school when she was working at a boutique and in her dad’s office. Kardashian said she discovered eBay while she was working at Robert Sr.’s office and loved shopping.

She said that she saw the opportunity to make money and capitalized on it.

Kardashian said she called up a store, bought five pairs of the Manolos for $700 each, and resold them on eBay for $2,500.

She said she became so “obsessed” with the return that she began to sell off her own clothes that she no longer wore.

Kardashian eventually channeled her love for reselling to help build a retail business model.

In 2006, Kim Kardashian and her sisters, Kourtney and Khloé, opened their first DASH store in their hometown of Calabasas, California.

The concept behind the store — a sort of consignment shop — was pretty similar to Kim’s love for reselling.

In the following decade, the sisters opened more locations, including one in Miami and one in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.

Kim Kardashian announced they’d be shutting DASH doors in April 2018 as the sisters continue to work on their own brands and families.

Kardashian said her original idea for the reality show, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” was to bring attention to the DASH brand.

“I was thinking, this might not last very long, but we’ll grow a great business and expand online,” she told Variety. “I thought it would be great press. I didn’t think it would turn into what it turned into.”

It turned into a larger phenomenon than Kardashian imagined it would.

In 2018, Complex ranked “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” one of the best reality TV shows of all time, behind only MTV’s “The Real World.”

It was so successful, that several spinoffs happened down the line.

The opening of DASH Miami in 2009 brought about a new reality spinoff: “Kourtney and Kim Take Miami.”

Shortly before the first episode of the family’s original reality show aired in October 2007, Kim Kardashian became the center of a scandal that some say catapulted her career.

In February 2007, a sex tape with Kardashian and Ray J — Brandy Norwood’s brother whom Kardashian dated from 2003 to 2006 — surfaced and made its way into the news.

Kardashian sued the entertainment company distributing the tape at the time.

She reportedly settled the case for $5 million.

While the tape wasn’t technically part of her career path, she did tell Oprah she’s “not naive to the fact” that it helped launch her into fame.

“I think that’s how I was definitely introduced to the world,” she said.

At the end of 2007, Kardashian posed for Playboy, and the shoot was captured on the first season of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

According to People, she said she was so nervous that she had to sit down with the magazine’s founder and then-editor-in-chief, Hugh Hefner, who she credited with helping convince her to pose.

In 2008, E! gave fans of the reality show a second season.

The show lasted on E! for 20 seasons. There’s now a second show, “Kardashians,” on Hulu.

In 2009, Kardashian released a three-DVD workout plan called “Fit in Your Jeans by Friday.”

In a promotional video, she called it “so high-fashion and so stylized, it’s very me.” Most of the outfits have an “’80s, futuristic” look, as described by Kardashian herself.

She said she developed it because people were continually asking her how she kept her curves in shape. She said that while working with a few trainers, she found a routine that worked for her, and built the videos around the method.

The DVDs are split up by physical focus — there’s “Ultimate Butt Body Sculpt,” “Amazing Abs Body Sculpt,” and “Butt Blasting Cardio Step,” which she says was inspired by her love for doing workout videos with her sisters in their teenage years.

In April 2010, Kardashian Glamour Tan was released onto the beauty market.

It’s a self-tanning gel created by the three sisters and was — at the time — exclusive to Sephora and cost $34. In 2019, there was a tube going for $79 on Amazon.

Six months later, Kim Kardashian made her debut in the perfume world with her eponymous scent.

In 2011, reality TV viewers got to watch what happened as Kourtney and Kim Kardashian opened their third DASH retail store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.

At the time, Kim Kardashian was newly married to NBA player, Kris Humphries.

The pair lived in a suite at the Gansevoort Hotel with Kourtney Kardashian, her then-boyfriend Scott Disick, and their son Mason Disick.

Kardashian gave viewers a look into her relationship with Humphries.

Their wedding was broadcast into the homes of people all over the US as “Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event.”

The event reportedly brought in $18 million in licensing fees, endorsement deals, and broadcast deals for Kardashian.

But 72 days later, they were divorced.

In 2011, Kardashian debuted a music video at the TAO nightclub New Year’s party for her song “Jam (Turn it Up).”

It was commercially released in March, according to Billboard. A New York Daily News headline following the song debut called Kardashian “the worst singer in the reality TV universe.”

A portion of the proceeds reportedly went to St Judes Children’s Research Hospital.

Also in 2011, the sisters released a clothing line with retailer Sears aptly dubbed Kardashian Kollection.

They came under fire with the line when they were accused of working with abusive employers to make their clothes, StyleCaster reported.

In 2013, the brand was said to be “flopping big-time.”

Sears dropped prices to less than $10, according to StyleCaster. The brand officially folded in 2015.

But of course, that wasn’t the only thing Kardashian had going on at the time.

In April 2011, she launched Gold, her second fragrance, according to Cosmopolitan.

And her third fragrance, “Kim Kardashian Love,” was released for her wedding to Kris Humphries in 2011.

There were only 979 bottles sold, according to Cosmopolitan — 1,000 were made, but 20 were reserved for her bridal party and one for herself on her wedding day.

In the summer of 2012, Kardashian launched her fourth fragrance, “True Reflection.”

The launch party in Hollywood benefited Dress for Success, a charity organization, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In November 2012, Kardashian and her sisters launched Khroma Beauty — a full range of cosmetics products.

The name was changed to Kardashian Beauty after another established makeup company called Kroma Beauty took the sisters and their lawyers to court. This came after Khroma was threatened with a different lawsuit from LA-based company Chroma Beauty, according to Teen Vogue.

The line didn’t last, and a former employee of the family said the real problem was likely the lack of involvement.

While Kim Kardashian and her half-sister Kylie Jenner are now heavily involved in their beauty brands, Khroma was a licensing deal, according to Fashionista.

In 2014, Kardashian released her iPhone and Android game “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.”

Just in the first five days, the game grossed $1.6 million, according to The New York Times.

As of August 2018, the game was bringing in around $8 million in a quarter for the Glu Mobile company, according to Variety.

The launch of Kimojis for iOS in December 2015 was huge for Apple’s App Store.

She told Rolling Stone that she’d only work with Kanye West-approved graphic designers to develop the emoji.

On the day of the launch, Apple’s App Store crashed.

Kardashian tweeted, “Apple, I’m so sorry I broke your App Store!!!”

In May of that year, Kardashian tweeted about her new children’s clothing line with Kanye West called TheKidsSupply.

She tweeted, “For the past few years Kanye and I have made almost all of our kids clothes and we have collaborated on a new kids line!”

According to Vogue, the entire first collection was inspired by Calabasas and included dresses, chokers, hats, sweatpants, and more. Later seasons included itty-bitty Yeezys, the luxury lifestyle sneakers developed by Kanye West and Adidas.

Kardashian got back into the beauty business with KKW Beauty in 2017.

The first product was a $48 contour kit that sold out in minutes and racked up more than $13 million in sales, according to Fashionista.

She went on to produce more products for the line, including a fragrance that made $10 million in one day.

TMZ reported that customers had a choice between three fragrances: Crystal Gardenia, Crystal Gardenia Oud, and Crystal Gardenia Citrus.

Her minimalist approach to the marketing process worked in her favor.

She didn’t spend money on traditional advertising — instead, she turned to her devoted social media following.

And it worked. People bought her perfume without even smelling it first.

In June, Kardashian agreed to sell a 20% stake in KKW Beauty to Coty Inc. (a publicly traded firm), which valued the company at $1 billion, according to Forbes. This reportedly bumped her net worth to $780 million — more than double her last-reported net worth of $370 million.

Kardashian also employed similar marketing tactics when she launched her shapewear line, SKIMS Solutionwear, in 2019.

The line was originally called Kimono. The name generated backlash as some audiences said it disrespected Japanese culture. Kardashian changed it to SKIMS around two months after the initial product announcement.

For the past few years, Kardashian has also been speaking at and headlining conferences.

She’s appeared at events like Glamour’s Women of the Year Summit, Create & Cultivate (as pictured above), the #BlogHer16 Conference, Re/Code, and more.

Kardashian had a hand in a wide variety of businesses and continues to build out her brands — both personal and professional.

Although, the line between the two brands is a bit smudged.

In 2019, Kardashian announced that she was studying for the 2022 bar exam.

“It’s never too late to follow your dreams,” she wrote on Instagram.

Kardashian told Vogue that she was inspired to study law after she helped Alice Marie Johnson get released from prison in 2018.

Kardashian publicly championed Johnson’s case and met with President Donald Trump in 2018 to seek clemency for Johnson, then a 62-year-old grandmother who was serving a life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses.

Prison reform has been a cause that Kardashian continues to champion.

She even said that she’ll sometimes take on sponsored Instagram posts — ones that she wouldn’t have otherwise considered — in order to fund her efforts.

She spoke at The New York Times DealBook conference about how she uses paid social-media posts to support the cause.

At the conference, she said that if a paid post opportunity comes her way, even one that’s “off-brand,” she thinks: “‘OK, well this can fund x amount of people behind bars, that can help free them with simple legal fees that they just can’t afford …’”

She has reportedly been apprenticing at a San Francisco law firm.

Robert Shapiro — a lawyer who worked with Kardashian’s father on the O.J. Simpson murder trials — told TMZ that he thinks she has skills that will help her as a lawyer.

In April 2021, Kardashian officially joined Forbes’ World Billionaires list.

Forbes cites KKW Beauty and SKIMS, as well as “cash from reality television and endorsement deals, and a number of smaller investments” as sources of her wealth.

The reporting estimated that her majority share of SKIMS was worth “a conservative $225 million” as of 2020 — a number Forbes used to bump her net worth up to $1 billion from $780 in October 2020.

Forbes now estimates Kardashian’s net worth to be $1.8 billion.