Kris Jenner, Anastasia Soare and Tommy Hilfiger Share Their Brand-building Secrets

Kris Jenner, Anastasia Soare and Tommy Hilfiger vacation together in glamorous locations, but they are also business mentors to each other.

“You guys are probably so sick of my phone calls,” joked Jenner, who, alongside Soare, was being interviewed by Hilfiger at the WWD 2024 Beauty CEO Summit in Key Biscayne, Fla.

“We learn from each other,” said Soare.

Jenner and Soare have been friends for decades, having first met each other because the latter styled Kim Kardashian and Robert Kardashian’s eyebrows at her Beverly Hills salon, before launching her eponymous makeup brand, Anastasia Beverly Hills.

“This friendship blossomed and we started spending our holidays together and Christmases,” said Jenner. “To put a cherry on top of that, Anastasia — along with Tommy — became one of my most treasured mentors and really helped me and Kylie when Kylie was starting her own business as a teenager and I didn’t know how to make a lip kit and that’s what she wanted. Anastasia really walked me through the process of starting a brand, trying to figure it out and all the way through the years.”

Recalling the beginnings of Kylie Jenner‘s beauty business, which began as DTC with Kylie Lip Kits almost a decade ago, Jenner explained that she had to quickly learn to switch from her traditional mindset of launching a company to how to be a DTC brand.

“I remember Kylie launching on DTC and I was so traditional in my values and the way I thought about business and what I was used to…..I kept saying to Kylie, ‘look, this is going to happen in 30 days — where’s your marketing plan? Are you in a magazine? Is there a billboard?’ She says, ‘Mama I got this. Just stop.’ OK — well I thought it’s a little launch she’s going to do or whatever she’s calling it,” said Jenner.

“One day she just wakes up. She presses a button, she launches her product, she has it all figured out……in four seconds she sold out,” Jenner continued. “We thought the site crashed. We thought ‘Oh man, this is going to be a disaster. Nobody can buy it.’ And some members of my team said, ‘no, it’s sold out. It’s done.’ She really disrupted an industry in focusing on things online for her generation.”

In 2018, Kylie Cosmetics entered Ulta, a partnership that Jenner said has been successful. The following year, she sold a majority stake in the business to Coty Inc. for $600 million. More recently, there have been rumblings that the Jenners want to buy the business back, but so far both parties have not commented publicly.

In the space of a decade, the Kardashian/Jenner business empire has expanded greatly. Kim Kardashian has Skims, her beauty lines and two upcoming secret projects, Khloé Kardashian has Good American and is developing a fragrance, Kourtney Kardashian Barker has Poosh and Lemme, Robert Kardashian has Arthur George Socks and Grandeza Hot Sauce and Kendall Jenner has 818 Tequila. And let’s not forget Kylie Jenner’s other businesses, fashion line Khy and vodka brand Sprinter. Kris Jenner has also been ventured into businesses without her children, including cleaning brand Safely.

“I feel like I work for a different company every day depending on who needs me most, so that’s exciting,” said Jenner. “What I love about our businesses is every business has its own little satellite — it’s own hub, its own team. They’re all run very efficiently.”

Hilfiger chimed in that each member of the family has hundreds of millions of followers “so when you add that up there are more followers within the KJ clan than the largest corporations in the world and some of the countries in the world.”

On working with her daughter Claudia Soare, president of Anastasia Beverly Hills, Soare said: “I have one daughter and one business. [Kris] has six and more than six businesses. I don’t how she does it. She’s my idol.

“Working with my daughter is wonderful. I’m proud of how she has a purpose. She wakes up in the morning and she loves what she does. She works so much but she’s passionate, she’s authentic, she loves what she does,” Soare continued. “Of course we get in fights. I started firing her when we first worked together because she was late for work. The beauty of our working relationship is that we work for the brand. We work for Anastasia. There’s no ego involved. It’s just what is the best for the brand.”

When asked about the obstacles in retail today, Soare responded that there are many. “You have to be passionate to be able to keep doing what you love because it’s difficult. Every day you wake up and you face different challenges. It’s a lot harder right now than it was 20 years ago.”

According to Soare, those challenges include the general cost of doing business, although she stressed she was lucky to have great retail partners in the likes of Sephora and Ulta.

Indeed, Soare believes that physical retail is still a vital component of makeup distribution. “Makeup is a product that has to be sold in stores because the client wants to try it,” she said. “You could see it on Instagram or any social media or online, but it’s different when you touch an eye shadow, a lipstick. It’s an emotional impulse buy.”

In the future, she just wants to keep learning new skills, whether it be new social media channels or AI: “We’re always learning from each other and when we stop learning we have to give it up.”

“Well, none of us are ready to give it up yet,” quipped Jenner.