SKIMS Hits 5 Billion and Follows the Jordan Brand Playbook
Kim Kardashian's shapewear label raised $225 million from Goldman Sachs at a $5 billion valuation. Nike partnered with it the same year. That combination has one obvious historical parallel.
SKIMS raised $225 million from Goldman Sachs Alternatives in November 2025, valuing the company at $5 billion. That is up from $4 billion two years earlier and $3.2 billion the year before that. The brand is projecting more than $1 billion in net sales for the current year.
At the same time, Nike announced its first-ever partnership with an external company: NikeSKIMS, a women's activewear and footwear line combining Nike's technical manufacturing with SKIMS's emphasis on fit and size inclusivity. The line began reaching consumers in 2026.
Inc.com described Kim Kardashian this week as "the Michael Jordan of shapewear." The comparison is instructive and, at the current moment, worth taking literally.
What the Jordan Parallel Actually Says
Nike signed Michael Jordan in October 1984. The first Air Jordan shoe launched in 1985 and was projected to generate $3 million in revenue. It brought in $126 million. Jordan Brand became an official Nike division in 1997, thirteen years after the original deal.
As of early 2024, Jordan Brand is Nike's best-selling division at approximately $7 billion in annual revenue, accounting for about 17% of Nike's total wholesale equivalent sales, per Afrotech citing Business Insider. The brand started as one athlete's endorsement and became a line that outlives any single endorsement cycle.
The NikeSKIMS deal follows the same structural logic. SKIMS, which Kardashian co-founded in 2019 with CEO Jens Grede, was already a standalone business before Nike entered the picture. Nike is not bringing the celebrity to a product; it is bringing its manufacturing and distribution infrastructure to an existing brand with demonstrated consumer demand. Business Insider noted that Nike had not previously partnered with an existing external company this way.
The Business Under the Brand
SKIMS began as a shapewear label in sizes XXS to 5XL and has since expanded into loungewear, swimwear, and menswear. It became profitable in 2023, the same year it reported approximately $750 million in net sales, up from $500 million in 2022 and around $145 million in 2020. The brand added the NBA, WNBA, and USA Basketball as official underwear partnership clients.
The retail footprint is expanding quickly. SKIMS opened a Fifth Avenue flagship and a 4,546-square-foot Sunset Strip location in April 2025. It plans 22 domestic stores total, plus standalone locations on London's Regent Street and in Dubai by mid-2026, according to Fortune.
Fortune reported Kardashian holds roughly 35% of the company. Forbes estimated her net worth at $1.7 billion based on that stake, placing her on the World Billionaires List.
What the Parallel Does Not Settle
Jordan Brand took thirteen years to become a Nike division. SKIMS is five years old. The NikeSKIMS line is in its first year of commercial availability. The comparison is structurally accurate, in the sense that it describes how a celebrity-attached brand can become an independent institutional business through a Nike partnership, but the destination is not yet confirmed.
Co-founder Emma Grede has argued publicly that celebrity talent attracts customers once but not repeatedly, and that SKIMS's durability comes from the product itself. That framing is important because it is the same argument that Jordan Brand supporters made in the 1990s: the shoes sold after Jordan retired because they were genuinely desirable objects, not just souvenir merchandise.
Whether NikeSKIMS footwear reaches comparable traction is an open question. Brendan Dunne at Complex has argued the apparel line could approach Yeezy's Adidas footwear revenue line in total, calling that "not totally unreasonable," while noting the footwear line is unlikely to replicate Yeezy's impact. The apparel comparison is where the Jordan parallel is most plausible.
SKIMS's next scheduled milestone is its broader international launch, with the London and Dubai stores expected by mid-2026. Whether the NikeSKIMS line and the standalone retail expansion convert the $5 billion valuation into a sustainable institutional business is the question the Jordan comparison is really asking. The proof will come from the stores.
