Reality TV star and business mogul Kim Kardashian may now boast a billion-dollar fortune from her beauty and shapewear brands, but she has revealed her empire was built on far shakier financial foundations. The 45-year-old founder of SKIMS and KKW Beauty has opened up about the early, cash-strapped days of her family's first venture, the Dash boutique.
The Dash Boutique Struggle: Bad Credit and Minimum Payments
In an exclusive lesson from her new MasterClass, Kardashian recounted the difficulties she and sisters Khloe and Kourtney faced trying to make their Dash store profitable after it opened in 2006. She admitted neither she nor Khloe had good enough credit to secure a store card, forcing them to get one solely in Kourtney's name, who had the best credit rating at the time.
"We were able to get a credit card, first solely in Kourtney’s name because she had the best credit," Kim revealed. The sisters used this card to buy all of the inventory for the boutique. With funds tight, their repayment strategy was far from financially prudent. "We would pay just the minimum every month when the credit card bill would come," she stated. "This is probably the worst advice because you probably should be paying your credit card bill off, but we just didn’t have the money."
Their financial reputation with suppliers was also poor. Kim confessed she and her sisters had a track record of not "being able to pay vendors back on time," which meant they "had to pay for everything upfront." The initial capital for the store's lease came from a small inheritance from their late father, lawyer Robert Kardashian.
The 'Kimmandments': Building a Billion-Dollar Brand
Now sharing her hard-won wisdom, Kim is teaching her 10 'Kimmandments' in her New Rules of Business MasterClass. She insists these are non-negotiable rules she lives by while running her empire. The principles include: 'You Are The Product,' 'Turn Failure Into Strategy,' 'Your Customer Is Your Co-Founder,' and 'Empires Are Built Before Dawn.'
"These aren’t my suggestions; these are the rules I live by," she maintains. In the class trailer, she boasts, "I turned being underestimated into billions... I’m here to give you my ten principles that build billion-dollar brands." The mom-of-four is sharing her early missteps, like the credit card struggles, hoping others can avoid similar pitfalls.
From Cultural Phenomenon to Closure
Despite becoming a cultural phenomenon with locations in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York, Dash struggled financially for years before finally closing its doors in 2018. By then, the sisters had moved on to build their own separate and highly successful brands.
The MasterClass, available at a promotional rate of $6 a month, features videos of Kim preparing for photoshoots and taking business calls. She even shows a flash of her demanding side, snapping "Don't touch me!" at a stylist before laughing and saying she was kidding. She explains her serious business philosophy: "There’s truly nothing lamer than half-assing it. When people underestimate you, use it."
Kim's journey hasn't been without recent setbacks. She also opened up about losing confidence after failing the California bar exam, a key step in her quest to become a lawyer. She told Time magazine she felt "really uncomfortable and not confident for a while" but is determined to retake the test. Her story charts a course from minimum credit card payments to mastering a multi-billion dollar business empire, proving that early financial woes don't have to define ultimate success.
