Kylie Jenner is officially the youngest self-made billionaire.
After saying last year that Jenner was on her way to becoming a billionaire, Forbes reported on Tuesday that the 21-year-old had finally achieved billionaire status thanks to 9% revenue growth in her $900 million business, Kylie Cosmetics, in 2018, fueled by a partnership with Ulta that brought her products to its more than 1,000 US stores.
"Add in the cash Jenner has already pulled from the profitable business, and the 21-year-old is now a billionaire, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion," the Forbes reporter Natalie Robehmed wrote. "She's the youngest-ever self-made billionaire, reaching a ten-figure fortune at a younger age than even Mark Zuckerberg (who was 23 when he hit that mark)."
Bloomberg indepentally confirmed that Jenner is worth $1.02 billion, later that day.
Jenner made her foray into cosmetics in 2015 when she starting selling lip kits, with lipsticks and lip liners. They sold out in less than a minute.
Several months later, she launched Kylie Cosmetics on Shopify with 500,000 lip kits in six colors. By the end of 2016, the company had generated $307 million in revenue, INSIDER reported.
Experts have said the key to her success is her well-executed social-media strategy: She has more than 175 million followers across the platforms she uses to market her products, Forbes said.
The business overhead is low. According to Forbes, Jenner has a team of seven full-time and five part-time employees, while manufacturing and packaging are done by a local company in California, the sales and fulfillment are handled by Shopify, and her mother, Kris Jenner, handles finance and public relations for a 10% management fee.
Kylie Jenner was on the cover of Forbes' "America's Women Billionaires" issue in August, when the magazine reported that she was the 27th-richest self-made woman in the United States.
Many took issue with Forbes classifying Jenner as a "self-made" near-billionaire, saying that being born into extreme wealth and fame is the opposite of being self-made.
Read more: People are slamming Forbes for putting Kylie Jenner on its list of the richest 'self-made' women
Even Dictionary.com got involved:
—Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) July 11, 2018
