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KKW Beauty is an American beauty line founded and owned by reality star Kim Kardashian. The company launched on June 21st 2017, with the original contouring and creme highlighter kits selling out within minutes.

Background
In April 2017, Kardashian collaborated with half-sister Kylie Jenner, through her Kylie Cosmetics brand called KKW X Kylie. The collaboration inspired Kardashian to create her own beauty line, featuring a three-piece contour and highlighter kit. Available in four shades (light, medium, dark, deep dark), each comes with a dual-ended contour stick and a matte and shimmer highlight stick. The first launch sold out in less than 20 minutes, with Kardashian selling 300,000 kits and earning $14 million during the time frame. The label was originally launched with a contouring kit, but just a few months later more and more special-edition kits continued to be added to the line. Kardashian plans on releasing new products semi-regularly.

Marketing
Kardashian's products are only accessible online at www.kkwbeauty.com. Just one of the three perfumes she launched, sold for a limited time at the beauty store The Violet Grey. The star also updates her Instagram accounts regularly, where there are various announcements on release dates and times for her site.

June 13, 2017, the KKW Beauty Instagram was created featuring posts such as video tutorials, fan pictures and teasers for up-coming products. The account is completely devoted to the label. By November 7, 2017, the account had already gained 1 million followers. The KKW fragrances also have their own account, @kkwfragrance, which has 98.5k followers.

Kardashian stated her target market will be more of an older audience, as a majority of the makeup products are infused with anti-aging skincare properties.

Packaging
The KKW Beauty products all come in the same nude coloured packaging with stripped-back designs. The ‘KKW Beauty’ logo is also engraved in capital letters onto all of the products. The perfumes, on the other hand, are much different, held within crystal-shaped bottles.

Manufacturing and packaging is outsourced to Seed Beauty, a private-label producer in Oxnard, California, while sales go through the online outlet Shopify.

Collaborations
After ten years of collaborating together, Kardashian announced on January 11th, 2018 that she had teamed up with her make-up artist Mario Dedivanovic for a Spring 2018 collection. The first palette, KKW x Mario, was later revealed on the KKW Beauty Instagram alongside a concealer. The collection includes one nude lipstick, two high shine lip glosses and an 10-pan eyeshadow palette with warm matte neutrals, golden metallics, and pigmented shades.

Blackface Scandal
When Kardashian announced the approaching launch of the KKW Beauty Cream Contour Kit, she advertised with an image of her face. The image created tons of controversy, as Kardashian was accused of blackface, due to her picture appearing to be a few shades darker than her usual skin tone. Kardashian later apologized and addressed the situation on an episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians. Kardashian stated that she would never want to offend anyone, and that her skin was already fairly tanned when she shot the images, resulting in the contrast being off.

Lack of Inclusivity
The release of the campaign debuting Kardashian's new concealer line caused controversy from viewers stating that most of the shades cater to lighter skin tones. Model Mouna Fadiga, who was featured in the campaign, later wrote on Instagram that the makeup perfectly fits her darker skin colour, and that she wasn't used in the advertisement only to pretend it was.

Competition with Kylie Cosmetics
Many fans were indicating that KKW beauty was trying to copy and steal sister Kylie Jenner's ideas and products seen in Kylie Cosmetics. Kardashian was quick to say that they are completely different, as they have separate ages and audiences as their target market. Kardashian also publicly expressed that Jenner is solely focused on the lip category, while she is focusing on contouring and highlighting.