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Read Case 12.1: Kylie Jenner, The Creative Entrepreneur Who Built A Global Empire in Record Time.
Write a reflection paper by addressing the prompts below.
Explain what you think of as being most important to Kylie Jenner’s success; is it the products she sells or her creative marketing techniques? Why?
If you were a consultant for Kylie Jenner, what is a new product that you think she would be successful at launching? Why?
Identify an action plan for the new product you suggested to Kylie Jenner.
As a consultant to Kylie Jenner, explain how the inputs-processes-outcomes (IPO) model would contribute to creative team functioning within her company.
CASE 12.1 KYLIE JENNER, THE CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR WHO
BUILT A GLOBAL EMPIRE IN RECORD TIME
Constantine Andriopoulos
As you read this case, there are boardrooms of beauty executives across
the globe developing new products and decoding sales figures in order to
recreate a fraction of the magic that Kylie Jenner has built with Kylie
Cosmetics. Kylie Jenner grew up under a microscope as the youngest
daughter of Kris and Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Olympic gold medal
decathlete Bruce Jenner), sister of supermodel Kendall Jenner and halfsister of Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Rob Kardashian. Kylie Jenner
recognized early in her life that the most successful businesses set out to
solve a problem. By her own account, Jenner’s insecurity has long been
her lips. In an effort to make them appear plumper, she began overdrawing
them and filling them in with lipsticks. Armed with confidence in her abilities
to leverage a huge platform from both the TV show and her increasing fan
base, and with a mission to disrupt the cosmetics industry dominated by
some of the most famous brands in the world, Jenner launched her own
cosmetics line in November 2015 – Kylie Cosmetics. By recognizing an
unmet need and focusing on customers who were like her (teenagers), she
launched a $29 ‘lip kit’ consisting of a matching set of lipstick and lip liner.
This was not an overnight success. Jenner started quite early to establish
her personal brand, and then she got into partnerships and endorsements
and launched other products that carried her personal signature. She
created an app and worked on a fashion line with her sister, Kendall
Jenner. Once these efforts showed some promising results, she launched
her own line in a limited run at a premium price. She was both excited and
scared. ‘Did I order too much product? Will my product sell?’, she asked
herself. She had every right to worry about launching her new venture
since she spent every last dime without even knowing whether it would be
a success. Luckily, she decided to take the risk. The initial stock launch
sold in less than a minute, crashed the website and resulted in some
impressive profits for Jenner. Despite these early successes and growing
online sales, Jenner was curious to identify other ways to connect with
customers. She very quickly recognized the power of interacting directly
with her customers and seized the opportunity to test the product in pop-up
stores, where tens of thousands of people visited in pursuit of the perfect
lips (Winter, 2017). Jenner now runs one of the hottest, full-service, directto consumer (D2C) beauty companies ever. Her business has sold more
than $630 million worth of makeup, including an estimated $330 million in
2017 (Forbes, 2018). Forbes values her company, which has since added
other cosmetics like eye shadow and concealer, at nearly $800 million.
Jenner owns 100% of it and her empire employs seven full-time and five
part-time employees (Forbes, 2018). She does not own a factory, like many
billion-dollar companies. Instead, she has partnered with an experienced
manufacturer. Most of her other business functions, such as packaging,
sales and fulfilment are outsourced to different companies. Consequently,
overhead costs are low. Jenner is primarily responsible for product
development and leveraging her social media following. How does she
create new products? In her interview at Fast Company magazine, she
noted that ‘I’m always thinking about what I want, and what I think people
want’ (Dodson, 2017). Her strategy is not to pay for advertisements and
commercials and to use only social media in terms of marketing her
products. She connects numerous times per day with her over 100 million
followers (mainly young women and girls) on Instagram, Snapchat and
Twitter and shows which Kylie Cosmetics products she is using, talks about
forthcoming products, and announces new launches. Jenner and her
lifestyle are active, dynamic, creative, and entrepreneurial. Jenner makes it
very easy for consumers to relate to her and in return, her consumers
aspire to become like her.
Today, her empire extends to eyeshadows, face palettes and application
tools. In several interviews, Jenner states that making money is not the
primary motivator behind her brand or her success. It is her passion about
make-up, her focus on solving problems and using innovative marketing
techniques to make this happen. Kylie Cosmetics is an industry leader and
Jenner is spending whole days in meetings finalizing, dreaming and
designing collections. What started as a small business has quickly turned
large scale. Jenner is unstoppable. In her interview at the Australian
Vogue, she said ‘No, there are definitely some things and some goals I
have left to achieve, and I never get too comfortable. I never think: “Oh, I
made it.” There’s definitely a lot of stuff that I have yet to do’ (Rippon,
2018).
