From East London to a $5 billion brand, Emma Grede built her fortune by spotting what was missing and making the call first.
Emma Grede cold-called Kris Jenner with an idea for a denim brand that didn’t exist yet. She wanted jeans that fit women in every size, and she wanted Khloé Kardashian as her partner. In October 2016, Good American launched and sold $1 million on its first day.
Ten years later, that call has turned into a portfolio. Emma Grede is the co-founder and CEO of Good American, a founding partner and chief product officer of SKIMS, and a co-founder of the home care brand Safely and the sportswear label Off Season. She is also a bestselling author and a podcast host, and Forbes first named her among America’s richest self-made women in 2022.
East London Roots
Emma Grede was raised in East London by a single mother, one of four girls, with Jamaican and Trinidadian roots on her father’s side. She was delivering newspapers by age 12. She left the London College of Fashion without finishing, worked her way through fashion and events, and at 26 founded ITB Worldwide, an agency that paired celebrities with brands.
Denim for Every Body
Good American launched in sizes 00 to 24, built around a four-part waistband designed in-house, and Grede set her terms with retailers from the start. “You have to do it our way or it’s a no go,” she has said. The brand reached $200 million in annual sales in 2022. At ten years old, it is growing again: Grede has said 2026 sales are up 30% year over year, and in October the brand opened a pop-up in New York’s SoHo.
The SKIMS Story
In 2019 Emma Grede joined Kim Kardashian and her husband, Jens Grede, as a founding partner of SKIMS. In November 2025 the company raised $225 million at a $5 billion valuation and expected to pass $1 billion in net sales for the year. This September she celebrated the brand’s first UK flagship, a 12,000-square-foot store on London’s Regent Street, in the city where she grew up.
More Brands, More Seats at the Table
Safely, the plant-based cleaning brand she developed with Kris Jenner, launched in 2021 and rolled into 1,700 Walmart stores the following year. In 2025 she teamed with designer Kristin Juszczyk on Off Season, a luxury sportswear brand. On television, she became the first Black woman investor on Shark Tank in 2021. One of her deals there, made alongside Lori Greiner, went to Range Beauty, the first Black woman-owned makeup brand to land a deal on the show. She also chairs the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which asks retailers to dedicate 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands.
Start With Yourself
In April 2026 she published her first book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life, which became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. The tour took her from Adler Hall in New York, onstage with Martha Stewart and Charlamagne tha God, to an evening in Los Angeles with Tracee Ellis Ross. Asked this fall how she keeps brands relevant, she kept it simple: “It’s about making things 1% better.”
What’s Next for Emma Grede
SKIMS keeps adding stores around the world, Good American is growing again at ten, and Aspire with Emma Grede keeps bringing founders and executives to her mic. The girl who once delivered newspapers in East London now sits on the board of the Obama Foundation and has a flagship on Regent Street.
