Skims is now a $5 billion brand, thanks to the completion of a $225 million capital raise.
The round, announced on Wednesday, was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives with participation from BDT MSD Partners’ affiliated funds. “This milestone reflects continued confidence in our long-term vision and coupled with disciplined execution, positions Skims to unlock its next phase of growth,” Jens Grede, co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement validates the hard work of our incredible team and partners who have helped us reach this exciting new chapter, becoming a global omnichannel retail brand,” co-founder and chief creative officer Kim Kardashian said. “We can’t wait to take Skims to the next level as we continue to innovate and set the standard for our industry.”
With the funding, Skims plans to fuel its physical retail and international expansion; the brand says that within the “next few years” it plans to be a predominantly physical business. The money will also be used for product innovation and category expansion, building on Skims’s recent commitment to both via its NikeSkims launch earlier this year. The company said Wednesday that it expects to surpass $1 billion in sales in 2025.
Six years since its founding, investors are optimistic about Skims’s growth. “Skims stands as a solutions-driven apparel innovator, pioneering new categories and redefining everyday wear. We look forward to partnering with management to pursue significant opportunities and deliver disruptive, sustained growth,” Beat Cabiallavetta, global head of hybrid capital at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, said in a statement.
In a tough market, Skims is driving significant growth that extends beyond the brand’s famous founder. Through a mix of product innovation, fast-thinking marketing — with a few viral stunts thrown in — and strategic hires, Skims is positioning itself for success.
A product-first foundation
The basis of Skims’s success is its solid product. “They’re relentlessly well-executed basics,” says Katy Lubin, VP of brand at global fashion shopping platform Lyst. “The fit is obsessive; genuinely inclusive sizing, fabrics that feel comfortable and move with you, cuts that work as base layers or standalone pieces.”
Shoppers want basics that actually work, Lubin says. “Skims pieces feel foundational in your wardrobe, and Skims gets that effortless confidence is a flex,” she says. Skims ranked at number 15 in the third-quarter edition of Lyst’s Hottest Brands Index, maintaining its position from the previous quarter. It’s the only brand in the top 20 aside from Cos that doesn’t sit in the luxury or accessible luxury category. It’s a testament to consumer favor; demand for the brand is up 271% year-on-year.
This quality-cost balance is key to Skims’s success, Grede told Vogue Business at the time of NikeSkims’s launch. “That’s something we’ve done not just through true innovation in the broad sense, but also innovation in terms of: how do we offer a really phenomenal high-value product at a more democratic price? That’s the key to our success.” He likened it to Starbucks’s “first sip experience”: “When people wear Skims for the first time, they often experience the Skims effect. You get them hooked on the feel of the product.”
Good product is especially significant for a brand with a famous founder. As many of the influencer founders at Vogue Business’s recent Gen Z Summit in Los Angeles said, having an established audience gets the word out, but it doesn’t keep customers coming back — nor does it sustain growth. “My followers know [my] brand already, and they’re already customers,” Deepica Mutyala, founder of beauty brand Live Tinted, said. “But you can’t grow just within your audience, there’s a limit to that.” Of course, Kardashian’s audience is larger than most, but if the last name were enough, there would be plenty more Kardashian-founded brands still in operation.
To make the products that consumers want, the Skims team stays in close touch with its base, Grede told Vogue Business. “We are constantly engaging with our customers and with our community, with what they want from Skims,” she said. “Feedback from our community is really what guides us very much into what we go into with active and with high performance.”
Marketing magic
If good product is the baseline, what’s propelled Skims further is its marketing finesse. Under EVP of communications and entertainment, Tracy Romulus (who is now also co-general manager of NikeSkims), Skims has developed a marketing strategy that taps buzzy and culturally relevant talent early on, meeting Gen Z audiences where they are. (Julia Collier was SVP of marketing at Skims until she joined J.Crew in December 2024.)
What Skims gets right, aside from its choice of talent, is its timing. Skims tapped Charli XCX in August 2024, at the peak of Brat summer. It featured White Lotus stars Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Grannò, fresh off season two, for its Valentine’s Day campaign that same year. “I watched White Lotus and had to have my girls!” Kardashian posted to Instagram. (Skims tapped season three star Patrick Schwarzenegger and his now-wife Abby Champion this year.) The brand’s latest campaign features Nara Smith and Lucky Blue Smith for the holidays.
At The Independent’s Luxury’s Great Reset event in January, Romulus spoke about the importance of getting in early, as opposed to joining the conversation once it’s peaked. It’s a priority for Skims, and it’s one that experts agree is a brand strength. “Skims has achieved cultural relevance, community loyalty, and long-term brand equity through marketing that moves at the speed of culture,” says Cait Marron, SVP of creative strategy at marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy. “The brand’s success is rooted in cultural intuition. It has an incredible sense of timing, knowing what its audience is paying attention to and how to turn those conversations into creative, high-impact storytelling that feels smart, intentional. and impossible to ignore.”
This celebrity clout is balanced with a focus on product, says Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at Globaldata. “There is a sense of honesty in that the marketing is relatable and focuses on the benefits of the products and how people feel wearing them,” he says. “This means that marketing also spills onto social media in quite organic ways, such as through influencers and ordinary consumers.” Skims’s ability to move beyond celebrity and tap communities is significant also, Marron flags, nodding to Skims’s use of prominent sorority influencers for its recent Campus Collection and Alex Cooper partnership for its its Wedding Shop campaign during her wedding.
Sometimes, though, the marketing feels too targeted to socials. Case in point: Skims’s faux hair underwear, or “bush underwear” as the product was dubbed. The launch drove headlines and social media chatter in droves — and sold out. Was it a case of all publicity is good publicity, or does the brand push it too far at times? In Lubin’s view, it’s the former. “The critique is the marketing. It gets people talking, creates cultural velocity, and ultimately moves product,” she says. “Skims knows its audience will either get the joke or be intrigued by the controversy. Either way, they re paying attention.”
The underwear were the latest in a line of viral launches, including August’s face wrap and 2023’s nipple bra. After the face wrap launched, the nipple bra — now a staple — saw a 69% lift in searches for the month of August, per Lyst, making it the index’s fifth-hottest product of Q3. It’s not without controversy; at launch, climate activists critiqued the climate messaging of the campaign’s clash with the bra’s synthetic materials. But its recent revival shows that the initial controversy hasn’t diminished its pull.
These well-timed ads and controversial attention-grabs are tapered by longer-term plays. NikeSkims, for instance, felt like a fit for many because of all of the engagement Skims had had with sports already. The brand is the official underwear partner of the WNBA, NBA and USA Basketball (since 2023); became a partner of League One Volleyball in 2025; and has tapped athletes from the NFL to soccer players for its campaigns.
High ambition
With its latest cash injection, Skims has made it clear that it has no plans to slow down, with plans for more stores, more products and more growth.
Kardashian’s influencer status will serve her well as Skims enters its next phase, Marron contends, noting that her personal brand has long operated like a modern business. “Those creator instincts are exactly what has allowed Skims to outpace legacy brands,” she says. “It behaves more like a creator than a brand — fast, intuitive and culturally fluent — and that is what keeps it winning with standout marketing.”
Skims has backed up this intuition with smart teams — and it’s now growing its staff.
Earlier this month, Skims appointed new executives. Dawn Vitale was appointed chief merchandising officer, joining from Levi Strauss Co., and Ami Colé founder Diarrha N’Diaye joined as EVP of beauty and fragrance for Skims Beauty. These appointments are significant as they signal ambition, experts say. “They’re building infrastructure for a multi-category lifestyle empire, not a shapewear brand,” Lubin says. “Beauty feels like a smart next move — it’s brand extension 101, high margins and well within the Kardashian-Jenner wheelhouse.”
With more physical store additions, Skims will need to be mindful, Saunders cautions, as opening stores creates a financial and capital commitment that is hard to dissolve, he says, adding that it can also impose a more rigid cost structure on the business. But he’s confident in Skims’s ability to manage. “Skims has shown itself to be a brand that has staying power and the view will be that to become more of a lifestyle label, it needs to control the distribution and experience,” he says. “This is also a sign that the brand has bold ambitions and that it wants to be a more significant player in the market.”
How much runway is there for growth? Plenty, experts say, so long as it’s well-managed. “The risk isn’t demand, it’s overextension,” Lubin says. “Right now, Skims has the cultural heat and the capital, but they will need to stay focused on what they do so brilliantly: fit, inclusivity and moment-making.”
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