On a drizzly Tuesday in September 2019, Skims co-founder Emma Grede was camped on the floor of Heathrow Airport, balancing a laptop. She had missed her flight back to Los Angeles and was trying to sync Skims’ site with inventory ahead of launch.
Just months earlier, the chief product officer of Kim Kardashian’s intimates brand had overseen the relabeling of 1 million units after Skims’ original name, Kimono, drew accusations of cultural appropriation.
With her production calendar mapped out 56 weeks ahead, Grede wasn’t about to let anyone down. The launch collection had already been delayed three times, slipping back an hour with each push. Once it did go live, the collection pulled in $2 million, selling out in 10 minutes.
Grede herself is worth $405 million, according to Forbes, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, taking pride in never having “skipped any steps” on the road to building her brand empire.
Long before co-founding the $5 billion shapewear juggernaut, ripping up the denim rulebook as CEO of Good American, launching a podcast, or earning a spot among ADWEEK’s 2026 Brand Genius Creators, Grede’s first job at age 12 was delivering newspapers in the Plaistow neighborhood of London.
Her upbringing as the eldest of four girls in a working-class neighborhood, famed for its close-knit community and bustling Queen’s Market (selling everything from $1 fish to colorful textiles), taught the entrepreneur from a young age that though “talent is evenly distributed, opportunity isn’t.”
“Where I grew up, you went to work to pay the bills,” Grede told ADWEEK. “So my expectation was never that I would have as much choice as I do right now.”
Starting with herself
Creating her own opportunities is the thread woven through Grede’s career. It’s also the foundation of her first book, Start With Yourself, a “manual for getting out of your own way and fulfilling your potential.”
Having supplemented her paper route by selling fireworks, toasted sandwiches, and beaded Fendi bags “that had fallen off trucks,” by 16, Grede had saved enough to cover half of the tuition fees for a business course at the London College of Fashion. (Her Uncle Joe kindly paid the other half.)
