Kim Kardashian is a creature of the social media world — with 344 million Instagram followers she might just be the queen of it.
But Skims — the brand she cofounded with Jens and Emma Grede in 2019 — has its real base in something much more tactile.
The market, the media and the world at large have oversimplified Skims, said Jens Grede, chief executive officer, in an interview ahead of the opening of the brand’s London flagship, which is part of a new retail push.
“They miss that — beyond the celebrity campaigns and the collaborations with Fendi or Dolce & Gabbana or partnership with Nike, or beyond the Will Ferrells or Hailey [Bieber] or even Kim — what Kim and I really designed is a fabric company first and foremost,” Grede said.
“We don’t really engage so much in collections as we engage in fabrication,” he said. “The press tries sometimes to talk more about the thing that’s more visually gratifying. What they miss is the fact that the business is built on soft lounge.”
He pointed to Skims’ Everyday Cotton line, which renders the brand’s signature fit and comfort in natural cotton, as an example.
“Everything else is wonderful to engage with the world and make people excited and bring people in and build this cultural moment,” he said. “But at the heart of it is really a fabric business.”
If Skims’ base is built on something so tangible, it’s fitting. The brand’s future is also clearly physical.
“Eighty percent of our category is bought in physical retail,” Grede said. “I want to be in the 80 percent business rather than the 20 percent business. I want to be in the 100 percent business.”
Including London, which opens Thursday, Skims has 27 company-operated stores as well as two doors in Mexico and, as of this week, two in the United Arab Emirates that are run by partners. The brand is also looking to open in Seoul later this year and, after that, Delhi and Mumbai.
Skims will have 55 stores by the end of this year and Grede plans to have more than 100 by the end of 2027.
“I want to do business the way that my customer wants to shop the brand,” he said. “The most frequently asked question we get is, ‘When are you going to open [a store near me]?’ And the brand is actually still underrepresented in terms of physical presence.
“In New York, we have a phenomenal flagship on Fifth Avenue, but Manhattan isn’t the one-store market,” he said. “Manhattan by itself in our category might be a three- or four-store market.”
Skims’ retail push began in the U.S. and Grede said the market there is a couple years ahead.
“The U.S. strategy has also really been about opening important stores in the most important American cities and the most important retail destinations in the U.S., which is really a combination of key street locations as well as let’s say the Tier A malls,” he said.
Grede doesn’t have a set target for how many retail stores to ultimately open, but he said the approach is “fiscally disciplined.”
“We have a good 200 to 300 Tier A retail locations around the world before we would start taking a step down,” he said. “We’ll monitor that as we get further into our retail rollout. I’ve been very focused on making sure that the box and the concept of how we do retail really works.”
Going big seems to work for Skims, as it does for Kardashian herself.
Skims London flagship on Regent Street.
© Mark Cocksedge
The new Regent Street flagship in London has some 12,000 square feet of selling space in the middle of one of the world’s most-important shopping districts.
“We’re on the 50 yard line next to Apple [with a] corner store,” Grede crowed. “We put together two stores to make it happen.”
Designed by Rafael de Cárdenas Ltd., the location features the brand’s most expansive offerings in the U.K., bringing together signature collections and seasonal launches across underwear, shapewear, loungewear, menswear, accessories and NikeSkims.
The new UAE store, which opened on Tuesday, covers 6,200 square feet in the Dubai Mall.
Grede said Skims still operates retail with a “one world, one concept” approach, but will start to modulate the offering.
“I’m sure we will make adaptations and learn each and every market in terms of their preferences and make sure that we stay relevant in the assortment, fit and sizing,” he said.
As Skims continues to flesh out its retail business, it will have a natural growth story to tell future investors — current investors already like the story, giving the seven-year-old company a $5 billion valuation in a fundraising round last year.
But while the company has long been seen as one of fashion’s strongest potential IPOs, Grede is not racing toward Wall Street.
“Good companies have good options,” he said. “My focus has been to build a good company together with Kim. We don’t feel that we have any pressure to go public right now, nor do I think that the market is particularly forgiving for consumer [products companies]. But over time we are becoming a large company, but we have institutional investors and it is our responsibility to offer them optionality into the future. We’re very lucky that we have a group of investors that are not giving us any particular time pressure. It will happen when the time is right.”
In the meantime, Skims will continue to live at “the intersection of culture and commerce,” said Grede, who also puts the brand somewhere between the traditional intimates and lounge categories.
“We are our own category,” he said. “We really have carved our own niche in the concept of intimates and lounge. And I think that we’re the home of that wherever we open up.
“I remember Remo Ruffini of Moncler telling me once, they were asking him, ‘How many more of these black ski jackets can you sell?’ And turned out you could sell quite a few,” Grede said.
“Just like Moncler created a category of fashion ski performance and Lululemon defined the yoga and athleisure category, I believe Skims is on its way to define the category between intimates and lounge,” he said.
If that sounds ambitious — and it is — that doesn’t mean that Kardashian and Grede & Co. can’t do it.
Skims, for all the time it’s spent in the spotlight, is used to being overlooked.
“The brand has been somewhat underestimated for a long period of time,” Grede maintained. “I understand why because we have a cofounder that’s one of the most famous women in the world.
“At first they said it was Kim and then people said it was online. And first they said it was shapewear and then they said it was underwear. And then they said it was American. And then it turned out that it was global. And then they asked us if we could do stores.”
With plans to quadruple Skims’ retail presence in the next 18 months, Grede is preparing his answer to that last one right now.
