Kylie Jenner sold half of her beauty agency earlier this year in one of the best celebrity cash-outs of all time. But the fine print of the contract shows that she has been inflating her company’s scale and popularity. Yeah. For years.
More than a decade into their fame, among jaded media consumers, the Kardashian-Jenners tend to induce eye rolls and sighs. But when it comes to their money, even detractors of the first family of reality TV are intrigued; blogs, podcasts, even books have become the focus of the Kardashian-Jenner system and the cash it produces. Yet nobody cares about the subject more than the family itself.
But, when Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the clan, sold 51 percent of her Kylie Products to makeup giant Coty this January in a transaction worth $1.2 billion, it was a landmark moment for the family. The exchange appeared to validate what Kylie had been claiming all along and what Forbes had announced in March 2019: one of the best celebrity cash-outs of all time:The Kylie Jenner, at least until the coronavirus, was also a billionaire.
Yet a less flattering fact appeared in the deal’s fine print. Filings published over the last six months by publicly traded Coty laid out one of the best-kept secrets of the brand: Kylie’s company is much smaller and less successful than the family has spent years leading the beauty industry and media outlets to believe.
