Kylie Jenner on the Cover of WWD Beauty Inc. The Women’s Issue

Kylie Cosmetics founder, Kylie Jenner, stars on the cover of WWD’s Beauty Inc.

“The Women’s” issue. In an exclusive interview, the business mogul celebrates the celebration of 10 years of Kylie Cosmetics, and opens up about the brand’s evolution and growth since launch, as well as how she’s working to create a legacy company. She also speaks to her other accomplishments, including her fashion label, KHY, and vodka soda brand, Sprinter.

The influencer and beauty mogul, who now helms a mini-ecosystem of her own consumer brands, is doubling down on the category that first propelled her rise as an entrepreneur. It’s the second day of September and Kylie Jenner, freshly returned from first-day-of-school drop-off for her now 7-year-old daughter, Stormi Webster, is feeling sentimental.

“Stormi loves to play with makeup,” said Jenner, whose 3-year-old son, Aire Webster, has meanwhile been running around her office as she takes meetings for the day. As much as the 28- year-old founder is in back-to-school mode, she’s also deep in the throes of 10th-anniversary planning for her beauty brand — her baby before her babies — Kylie Cosmetics. 

“I’ve been very emotional about it,” said Jenner of the fast-approaching milestone. “I found my old phone from 2016 and there are these photos of me at 17, 18 years old, sitting on the factory floor creating my first eye shadow palette. I didn’t think that far into the future when I was creating the brand — I wasn’t thinking about 10 years later — so it is pretty surreal to be here.”

Indeed, when Kylie Cosmetics debuted in November 2015, Jenner hardly had a go-to-market strategy, much less a clear vision for 10 years on. Rather, the then-teenager had a website, three $29 lip kits (the liquid lipstick and liner duos that have become synonymous with the brand) and a “post” button on Instagram. That first online drop, which included 5,000 units per shade, famously sold out in seconds, a herald of sales outcomes to follow.

“I remember my mom was like, ‘Kylie, are we getting a billboard? Are you going to do it in a magazine?’ And I was like, ‘I’m just going to post it on my Instagram’ — it was this unheard-of thing at the time,” Jenner said.

Jenner’s social media first philosophy was a prescient move. As the world now knows, Jenner’s Instagram — particularly during her widely coined “King Kylie” era, marked by her oft-brightly colored hair and other edgy style choices of that time — proved a more effective launchpad than any traditional billboard.

“The Kylie Cosmetics lip kits were so matte that you could really overdraw — you could certainly fake the look of lip filler, which began rising at the time, or cover actual filler. It was a revolutionary product for the full-face look we refer to as ‘2016 makeup,’” said celebrity makeup artist and beauty historian Erin Parsons. “I often say it can take just a few faces to define that decade of beauty — and Kylie Jenner is one of them.”

By 2020, Jenner surpassed her older sister (and fellow beauty founder) Kim Kardashian as the most followed member of the Kar-Jenner clan on Instagram, and in 2022 she became the first woman to reach 300 million followers on the platform. Today, her collective social media following across Instagram, TikTok and X exceeds 490 million.

“Kylie is very connected to her audience,” said Anastasia Soare, founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills and longtime family friend. “Why were people following Kylie? Because of her transformation. And she knew exactly how to monetize that and to create products that will give them what they want.”

In fact, the launch of Kylie Cosmetics was a turning point for the industry on multiple levels. It changed how brands thought about leveraging social media to build buzz. It opened the floodgates for a new generation of celebrity beauty brands, whose legion of entrants has included members of Jenner’s own inner circle, Bella Hadid (Orabella) and Hailey Bieber (Rhode). The brand became the first Gen Z celebrity beauty line to be acquired by a conglomerate, with Coty taking a 51 percent stake in 2019 for $600 million. And for Jenner, the launch kicked off her own mini-ecosystem of consumer brands, including a fashion label, Khy, that she launched in 2023, and a vodka soda brand, Sprinter, which debuted in 2024.

“Each brand is about creating something that feels personal to me and connects with people in an authentic way. It always starts with, ‘would I wear this, use this, drink this? Does it feel like me?’ — that’s the consistency and storytelling across every category,” said Jenner, adding that Kylie Cosmetics, though, “is my number-one baby out of all my brands.” 

Like all babies, Kylie Cosmetics has endured its share of growing pains over the years. At the time of the Coty acquisition in November 2019, net sales were said to have been $177 million for the 12 months prior, up 40 percent year-over-year.

Sources say that in 2020, though, Kylie Cosmetics’ performance dipped to $160 million in net sales, taking a hit in part due to COVID-19, as well as a reformulation effort as Coty geared up to take the brand global. That effort — and a 2024 expansion into fragrance — would prove critical in bolstering the brand’s comeback.

Today sources peg Kylie Cosmetics’ net sales to be around the $350 million mark, driven primarily by the brand’s post-acquisition global expansion efforts rather than its direct-to- consumer momentum of yore. Now with 10 years of experience under her belt and a subsequently refreshed outlook on beauty, Jenner is laser-focused on forging a path toward longevity for Kylie Cosmetics.

“When I launched Kylie Cosmetics, the brand thrived on urgency and exclusivity — it was a different time, there weren’t many celebrity beauty brands — people were just excited to see something new,” said Jenner. “Now, they’re looking for products that fit into their everyday routines, and I wanted to evolve Kylie Cosmetics into that everyday beauty brand.”

Other brands of the same 2010s-era heydey, such as Glossier and Drunk Elephant, have similarly had to reckon with shifting beauty trends and increased competition, recently embarking on rebrands, shifts in executive leadership and more. “People have different needs than they did 10 years ago,” said Mandy Lee, fashion and trend analyst. “They want something that is completely innovative and different — it’s a very different ecosystem for brands to thrive in today.”

Reimagining Kylie Cosmetics’ core strengths to adapt to the times has been a multistep process, particularly as Jenner looks to win in a landscape where prevailing makeup trends now veer toward minimalism.

“I feel like my audience has grown up with me,” said Jenner. “We’ve been moving away from a full-face beat and those ultra-perfected looks to more natural, effortless beauty. It definitely pushes me to create products that reflect where we are in our lives.”

To that end, Kylie Cosmetics is ramping up in fragrance with its Cosmic franchise, which debuted as the top-selling new women’s fragrance launch by volume during the first quarter of 2024, per Circana — as well as a more comprehensive lip offering, which remains the brand’s number-one category.

At Ulta Beauty, which became Kylie Cosmetics’ first retailer in 2018, Kylie Cosmetics comprises around 3 percent of lip share, per YipitData. “Creating innovative lip products will always be one of my biggest passions,” said Jenner, whose more recent takes on the category include lip butters, glazes, tinted butter balms and myriad lip liner varieties as “lip combos,” today’s trend toward multistep lip routines — not so different from the premise of Kylie Cosmetics — continues to perform well.

“Now, I see beauty as less of a transformation, and more as a reflection of self-expression and individuality,” said Jenner. “I’ve learned that Kylie Cosmetics isn’t really about products, but about this connection and trust people have with my products.”

From the perch of Kris Jenner, who has been a part of the brand-building process alongside her daughter from Day One, this mounting conviction is apparent.

“The way Kylie has matured over the last 10 years, and gone from being in a meeting to now running the meeting, it’s been remarkable to watch,” she said. “Part of her allure, and what makes Kylie, Kylie, is that she’s been on this TV show since she was 9 years old — people have been able to watch her grow up and mature mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally, and now, as a businesswoman, a fashion stylist and beauty expert.”

As the world has emerged from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, Jenner’s star has similarly seemed to rise again in adulthood. The reality TV star is now a front-row fixture at fashion weeks — even taking to the runway herself at Coperni’s spring 2025 presentation at Disneyland Paris last year, generating nearly $17 million in media impact value for the brand, per Launchmetrics — and is leveraging her global appeal to invigorate the Kylie Cosmetics brand.

“The [global footprint] of the brand is something we are leaning into,” said Anna von Bayern, chief executive officer of Kylie Cosmetics and chief corporate affairs officer at Coty. She added that the brand is now available in 65 markets, with recent strong momentum in South Korea,

The U.S. comprises about 37 percent of Kylie Cosmetics’ sales, where distribution also includes Macy’s and Nordstrom. Global retailers include Douglas in Germany, Harrods and Selfridges in the U.K., Mecca Beauty in Australia, and Sephora and Tira in India.

“Kylie Cosmetics is remarkably global, and it is unique for Coty in that it is founder-led,” said von Bayern.

While there have been reports that Coty, the ninth-largest beauty manufacturer on the 2024 WWD Beauty Inc Top 100 ranking, may be looking to divest assets, the company has denied them and Jenner said of the relationship: “Coty has been an important part of growing Kylie Cosmetics and bringing the brand around the world, which has been a dream of mine.”

Earlier this year, Kim Kardashian’s Skkn by Kim, was acquired in full by Kardashian’s shapewear and apparel company, Skims. Before that, Coty owned a 20 percent stake in the brand, which it had acquired in 2020 for $200 million when the line was still known as KKW