Jens and Emma Grede, the couple behind the multimillion-dollar success of the Kardashian companies

A few days ago, TIME magazine named Skims one of the 100 most influential companies of 2023. The periodical’s cover featured the omnipresent Kim Kardashian clad in a black leather outfit. She’s the well-known founder of the company, which began with intimate apparel and shapewear and later expanded to include swimsuits, T-shirts and dresses; it has also become the NBA’s new official underwear partner. The Gredes are not mentioned until the article’s third paragraph, which discusses the brand’s thriving numbers: “Founded in late 2019, Skims earned $500 million last year, 25% more than projected and 80% more than it earned in 2021, up 90% from the year before. So far, 2023 has been a weak year for underwear sales but a buoyant one for Skims. CEO Jens Grede, who co-founded the company with his wife Emma and [Kim] Kardashian, says its intimate apparel sales were up 86% year over year.”

Until now, Jens and Emma Grede have remained discreet in the background of the very profitable businesses while the famous Kardashian clan takes the spotlight. With a profile that’s more business than media, they have given interviews to the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Cut. Emma Grede ranks 84th on the 2023 Forbes Self-Made Women list. Recently, she has become more well-known with her participation as a guest judge in the most recent seasons of the television show Shark Tank, where a group of aspiring entrepreneurs present their business ideas to a panel of investors (who usually smash them). Emma has half a million followers on Instagram, where she features photographs of herself with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, as well as sweet snapshots with her husband and the couple’s four children. Jens Grede’s Instagram account, on the other hand, is private and barely exceeds 1,000 followers. His description reads: “I like popular culture.”

The Gredes do not hide or conceal their work, but its success has always been intimately linked to their discretion, which is much more European than the American style of constant self-promotion. Jens Grede is Swedish and 45 years old. He was born into a family of artists: his father is film director Kjell Grede, who was married to the actress Bibi Andersson for 13 years. At the age of 20, Jens dropped out of school and moved to London. He and his friend Erik Torstensson founded the fashion advertising agency Saturday Group (now renamed Wednesday Agency) in 2003, which was established to create new opportunities for stagnant brands. As revealed in the Financial Times, they were responsible for Natalie Portman becoming the face of Miss Dior, Beyoncé doing a campaign for H&M and Gwyneth Paltrow signing with Hugo Boss. But their work did not just focus on matching celebrities with brands. Grede and Tortensson also started investing in their own businesses: together they launched the online luxury menswear megastore, Mr Porter (Tortensson’s partner is none other than Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter). They also launched the specialized leather clothing brand Frame, which became popular thanks to the collaboration of the creative couple’s friends, such as Karlie Kloss and Lara Stone, during Frame’s 2012 opening. Years ago, Jens Grede witnessed the power of the most popular faces of the moment to reach the masses.

But it was Jens’s wife, Emma Grede, who met the Kardashians. She grew up in London and studied business administration at the prestigious London College of Fashion. However, like her husband, she left her studies when she got an internship at Gucci and later specialized in fashion show production. By the time she joined Saturday Group, her future husband’s company already had a portfolio that allowed them to represent “half of London fashion week,” as they told The Cut. Around 2011, Emma met Kris Jenner at Paris fashion week. Jenner, the mother and official representative of the Kardashian clan, was looking for new business opportunities for her five daughters. Emma told her about an idea she had been kicking around for some time: a chic denim line that would fit all body types and embrace feminine curves. Kris Jenner saw the business vision, but for her daughter Khloé Kardashian instead of her. In 2016, Good American was born; Emma is the co-founder of the company, which managed to earn $1 million on its first day of sales thanks to the praised inclusivity of Emma’s initial idea, featuring the sizing that goes from 34 to 60.

Good American was the beginning of the Gredes’ romance with the Kardashians, and between the Gredes and the United States. In 2017, the couple left the Bloomsbury neighborhood of the British capital and their luxurious home — which sold for 5.5 million pounds ($6,944,465) — and settled in Bel Air, California, in a mansion built in 1938 by architect Paul R. Williams, a star favorite during Hollywood’s golden age. Some media report that their new home cost around $24 million.

The Gredes have not just worked with Khloé and Kim but have also established themselves as trusted partners for much of the K clan, including the matriarch. In 2021, the Gredes and Kris Jenner launched Safely, a line of household cleaning products with natural ingredients. That same year, the couple started their first fashion label with Kylie Jenner, called Khy, selling imitation leather garments, including dresses at around €125 ($137) and coats for €245 ($263).

Skims, however, continues to be the crown jewel in a highly profitable business where all the founders seem to have made a good profit: Kim Kardashian has managed to establish herself as designer and creative director of a brand that claims to anticipate women’s needs; put differently, she has made the girdle cool again. For their part, the Gredes have considerably increased their wealth, as they have majority ownership of Skims, and they have positioned themselves as kingmakers in the United States, creating brands with celebrities who seemed like they couldn’t give any more of themselves.

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