Unpacking SKIMS' Path to World Domination
Kim Kardashian’s wildly popular shapewear line SKIMS is valued at an enormous $4 billion. You would think that at sum, there’s not much more for the underwear company to achieve.
Like the Kardashian family’s 24-season chokehold on reality television, SKIMS could just keep chugging along with nary a wobble and sales would continue to impress.
But as the world ought to be well-aware already, Kim is far too ambitious to be complacent, as she made abundantly clear in the month of October.
On October 23, three years after its founding, SKIMS shook the world by announcing its debut menswear collection, tapping Nick Bosa, Neymar Jr., and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — three of the most well-known athletes in the world — to star in SKIMS Men’s underwear campaign.
On Instagram, Kim shared three posts about the launch (one for each athlete). Combined, they have since received over 7.5 million likes.
The collection, which officially launched on October 26, follows the same body-inclusive ethos as the women’s SKIMS line: tank tops, t-shirts, workout leggings, and briefs are all available from size XS to 5X.
More size options can only mean more people can buy it and, with the men’s underwear market valued at $5.7 billion, one can only guess at how much more SKIMS will grow the category.
Even if growth stalled, though, visibility would be assured: Kim snagged a handful of high-profile interview spots to spread the good word, ensuring that no one would be unaware of SKIMS' expansion.
That news would've been enough to rock the world alone but, only a week later on October 30, SKIMS was named the official underwear partner of the NBA, WNBA, and USA Basketball.
It’s not immediately clear what SKIMS' three-year deal means but the news alone is headline-worthy. That lack of clarity hasn’t stopped people from talking about it.
And Kim knows that that’s what matters most. When was the last time a underwear brand received this much chatter?
Now, again, you might think that all the buzz would stop there, but on November 2, Kim unveiled her most glamorous SKIMS activation yet: a flashy collaboration with crystal company Swarovski featuring body jewelry and sparkly shapewear.
The SKIMS website is already full of photos of models (including Kim herself) in bejeweled bodysuits and body chains festooned with massive Swarovski crystals. There, Kim's quoted as saying, “The world needs more glamor.”
It's a nice sentence that frames this collection's existence just fine but she could just as easily have said, “Because I can.” Why not? At this point SKIMS does as it pleases.
