Good American exploded in popularity by doing something most fashion brands ignored for years: designing stylish, premium clothing for a genuinely wide range of body types. What started as a denim-focused launch quickly grew into one of the biggest names in modern inclusive fashion.
A huge part of that success came from Emma Grede and her ability to understand exactly where the market was headed before everyone else did. However, when Lauren and Michael sat down with Emma on The Bossticks, the conversation went far beyond fashion.
They talked about ambition, parenting, self-care, and what it actually takes to build brands people obsess over. You can listen to the entire episode below. But if you want to hit the high points of who Emma Grede is and how she built her global brands, keep reading.
Good American CEO: Meet Emma Grede and Learn Her Story
Understanding Emma Grede’s rise offers insight into how modern brands scale through inclusivity, smart partnerships, and strong brand positioning. Her career reflects not only major personal success, but also the evolution of fashion and consumer culture over time.
Emma’s story is especially compelling because her success didn’t come from following a traditional fashion industry playbook. Instead, she focused on gaps in the market, understanding what consumers actually wanted, and creating businesses that felt both aspirational and accessible.
What Is Good American?
Good American is a body-positive fashion brand best known for its size-inclusive clothing. Emma Grede and Khloé Kardashian founded the brand in 2016 with the goal of creating elevated fashion that fits a wide range of body types.
The company initially launched with denim as its main focus, offering sizes 00 to 32+. Since then, it’s expanded into activewear, dresses, swimwear, shoes, wardrobe basics, and more. Good American has become one of the most successful fashion launches in recent history, reportedly generating more than $200 million in annual revenue.
Love Good American’s polished basics? Discover BRÛLÉ with founder Kenzie Burke on The Bossticks next.
Who Is Emma Grede?
Emma Grede is a British entrepreneur, fashion executive, investor, and brand strategist. She’s best known for co-founding Good American and helping launch SKIMS with Kim Kardashian.
Emma grew up in East London, England, alongside her three younger sisters. She watched her mother, often on her own, work tirelessly to support the family. She credits this experience with helping shape her ambition, discipline, and entrepreneurial mindset.
As a teenager, Emma developed a passion for fashion, marketing, and media. After graduation, she attended the London College of Fashion to hone her skills. However, she began working in the industry right away and eventually decided to build her career through hands-on experience rather than earning a degree.
Instead of following the traditional fashion career path, she turned her attention to fashion production and talent marketing. Long before influencer partnerships became mainstream, Emma recognized that celebrities and trends heavily shaped the success of modern fashion brands.
This led her to co-found ITB Worldwide in 2008, one of the earliest talent- and influencer-marketing agencies of its kind. The company focused on connecting celebrities with major fashion and beauty brands. This allowed businesses to tap into cultural influence in a more strategic and scalable way.
Though ITB Worldwide was revolutionary, Emma Grede’s biggest breakthrough came in 2016 when she and Khloé Kardashian launched the body-positive fashion brand Good American. It quickly became one of the most recognizable names in inclusive fashion, helping reshape conversations around size diversity in retail.
Emma Grede would go on to become known for building and leading several successful brands and initiatives, including:
- CEO and Co-Founder of Good American
- Chief Product Officer and Founding Partner of SKIMS
- Co-Founder of Safely
- Co-Founder of ITB Worldwide
- Chairwoman of The Fifteen Percent Pledge
- Early Brand Builder and Strategic Partner of FRAME
How Did Emma Grede Get Started?
Early Career in Fashion Marketing
Emma Grede started working in fashion production shortly after high school. Rather than going down the traditional clothing design path, she focused on branding, partnerships, and strategic marketing. She worked for companies like Quintessentially, Inca Productions, and Gucci at this early stage of her career.
Co-Founding ITB Worldwide
Having learned a lot about how celebrity and influencer partnerships could help scale brands, Emma launched ITB Worldwide in 2008. It was one of the earliest agencies that specialized in influencer- and celebrity-driven marketing campaigns. Through this, she built strong partnerships across fashion, beauty, entertainment, and media industries.
Launching Good American
In 2016, Emma used her deep understanding of fashion and marketing to launch Good American with Khloé Kardashian. Their goal was to create a premium fashion brand for all body types. At that time, they also produced all their clothing in Los Angeles.
Rather than separating petite and plus-size options into separate categories, the brand integrated extended sizing into the same collection. This, and the American-made quality, resonated with consumers, and Good American did $1 million in sales on its first day.
Expanding Into Fashion and Beauty
Good American continues to be a highly successful and influential brand, generating hundreds of millions in revenue each year. As a result, Emma Grede has built a reputation for scaling brands through strong storytelling, inclusivity, and celebrity influence. She has also expanded her work as an investor, advisor, and entrepreneur across both established and emerging consumer brands.
Interested in learning more about Emma’s strategy? Listen to “Emma Grede on Pt. 2 Work Life Balance Truths, Successful Traits, Finding Your Own Strengths, & Hustle Culture” next. In her second appearance on The Bossticks, Emaa discusses business wisdom, marketing strategy, and brand stories.
Co-Founding SKIMS
In 2019, Emma connected with Kim Kardashian through her sister Khloé Kardashian. Kim had been dyeing and altering her own shapewear for years because she couldn’t find anything that fit her needs. Ultimately, this gave her the idea of creating a shapewear brand that was inclusive and comfortable, yet elevated. Kim then partnered with Emma Grede and Emma’s husband, Jens Grede, to launch SKIMS.
Like Emma’s other brands, SKIMS is hugely successful. It’s still best known for its shapewear, but they now offer intimates, loungewear, pajamas, dresses, activewear, swimwear, hosiery, refined basics, and more. The company makes an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue.
Joining Shark Tank
As a respected entrepreneur, advisor, and investor, Emma Grede joined Shark Tank in season 13 as a guest shark. She’s made multiple appearances since and invested in multiple brands on the show, including:
Becoming a Leading Entrepreneur and Investor
Today, Emma Grede is considered one of the most influential entrepreneurs in modern fashion and consumer business. Through brands like Good American and SKIMS, she helped redefine what body-positive, celebrity-driven, direct-to-consumer brands could look like.
She has also helped launch and lead other major brands and initiatives, including Safely and The Fifteen Percent Pledge. At this point, Emma works as an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and public speaker, helping shape the future of fashion, beauty, and modern consumer culture.
To learn more about her journey, make sure you listen to the full Emma Grede podcast with The Bossticks.
What Is Emma Grede Known For?
- Co-founding Good American and advancing size-inclusive fashion
- Helping build SKIMS into a billion-dollar global brand
- Scaling celebrity-led consumer brands
- Influencer marketing and direct-to-consumer growth strategy
- Identifying cultural trends before they go mainstream
- Strategic storytelling and modern brand building
- Investing in emerging businesses and female founders
- Guest appearances on Shark Tank
- Becoming one of fashion’s most influential modern entrepreneurs
How Did Emma Grede Get Rich?
Equity in Good American
A huge portion of Emma Grede’s wealth likely comes from ownership equity in Good American. Because she co-founded the company rather than simply working for it, she benefited directly from the brand’s growth in valuation and annual revenue. As the company expanded from denim into multiple product categories and reportedly grew into a nine-figure business, the value of her ownership stake increased significantly.
Co-Founding SKIMS
SKIMS is likely another big driver of Emma Grede’s net worth today. As a founding partner, she holds equity in a company valued in the billions. Since SKIMS generates massive annual revenue and continues expanding globally, her stake in the business becomes more valuable as the company grows.
Business Partnerships and Brand Deals
Emma built much of her career around strategic partnerships between brands, celebrities, influencers, and media companies. Through collaborations, licensing deals, campaigns, endorsements, and brand-building partnerships, she created multiple high-revenue business opportunities beyond traditional fashion sales alone. These kinds of partnerships can generate both direct income and long-term equity value.
Expansion Into Multiple Brands and Investments
Beyond Good American and SKIMS, Emma has expanded into investing, advising, and launching additional companies and initiatives. The result? She’s able to diversify across multiple businesses, creating several income streams at once. This includes ownership equity, advisory roles, board positions, and investment returns.
Television Appearances and Public Influence
Appearing on Shark Tank and becoming a recognizable public business figure increased Emma’s visibility and influence. That visibility helps attract investment opportunities, partnerships, speaking engagements, brand collaborations, and media opportunities. In modern business, personal brand influence can directly contribute to financial growth and deal flow.
What Does Emma Grede Do as a CEO of Good American?
Leading Brand Direction and Company Growth
Emma Grede helps guide the brand’s overall business strategy and long-term growth. She oversees expansion into new fashion categories and product lines by identifying consumer trends and market opportunities. She also helps ensure Good American continues growing across retail, e-commerce, and wholesale partnerships.
Overseeing Product Development and Marketing Strategy
Emma got her start in fashion production and marketing, and she still keeps a strong focus on the products themselves. She works closely with her team on fit, sizing, fabric selection, and overall product quality. Of course, she also uses her marketing expertise to help shape the brand’s advertising, campaigns, and social media strategy.
Expanding Business Partnerships and Collaborations
As one of the first entrepreneurs to fully embrace influencer marketing, Emma continues to utilize celebrity, influencer, and media partnerships to increase brand visibility. She identifies strategic opportunities for collaborations that help Good American expand its reach and stay culturally relevant.
Managing Company Leadership and Operations
Running a fashion company involves much more than clothing and advertising. Emma works with teams across production, finance, logistics, and more to direct the company’s operations and growth. She expertly balances creative direction with smart financial and operational strategy. This allows the brand to scale while maintaining quality and consistency.
Shaping the Brand’s Inclusive Mission
Inclusivity has always been at the center of Good American. Emma Grede helped build the company around the idea that fashionable, premium clothing should be available to women of all shapes and sizes. Emma also prioritizes diverse representation in campaigns, helping customers feel seen, included, and represented by the brand.
Want to hear from another Black female marketing whiz about inclusivity and brand strategy? Listen to The Bossticks episode “Bozoma Saint John on How to Build Unshakable Confidence, Lead with Power and Advocate for Your Worth.”
Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Emma Grede
Always keep learning.
Emma says you “can’t afford to be ignorant” in business. She credits much of her success to constantly training herself, learning new skills, and improving over time. Her advice to entrepreneurs is to stay open to other people’s perspectives and never stop evolving.
Let passion develop through the work.
Instead of trying to find a purpose first and then chasing the perfect dream job, Emma believes passion develops through doing the work itself. In fact, she says many of her early jobs were difficult and unenjoyable. Ultimately, however, they helped her discover her true strengths and sharpen her skills.
Here’s Emma discussing how to find purpose through skills and experiences with The Bossticks.
Spot opportunities before everyone else.
Emma recognized the power of influencer marketing long before it became mainstream in the advertising world. She encourages entrepreneurs to pay attention to market gaps, consumer behavior, and emerging trends before everyone else catches on.
Want to hear more about this? Listen to the marketing expert and founder behind Bumble discuss her cutting-edge brand strategy in the Whitney Wolfe Herd episode of The Bossticks.
Build brands people emotionally connect with.
Emma believes customers are no longer drawn in by flashy advertising alone. People want to connect emotionally with the brands they support. Because of that, she encourages entrepreneurs to focus on storytelling, cultural relevance, and creating products customers genuinely love and return to again and again.
Use strategic partnerships to grow faster.
Emma built much of her career through partnerships across fashion, entertainment, media, and celebrity culture. She strongly believes collaborations and strategic relationships are key drivers of modern brand growth, visibility, and cultural relevance.
Stay obsessed with the customer experience.
One of Emma’s best tips for new entrepreneurs is to constantly ask yourself: “How are you making something with unbelievable value, with an unbelievable experience, and getting it to somebody really quickly?” She believes the strongest brands come from customer obsession and that entrepreneurs should focus equally on product quality as on marketing.
Build strong teams and trust great people.
Emma says there’s no single “genius” responsible for building a successful company. She believes one of her biggest strengths is finding talented people, building strong teams, and trusting them to do their jobs well.
If you want to learn more about how she manages employees, listen to Emma’s team-building strategy on The Bossticks.
Work harder than most people are willing to.
Emma is very open about the level of work required to build successful businesses. She believes there is no substitute for hard work, consistency, and resilience. From early mornings and long days to constantly solving problems and making decisions, Emma says entrepreneurship requires a willingness to outwork most people around you.
Emma Grede helped redefine inclusive fashion through brands like Good American and SKIMS.
Emma Grede’s success is proof that you build the most influential brands through innovation, cultural awareness, and understanding what consumers actually want. From Good American to SKIMS, she’s helped reshape what modern fashion and celebrity-driven businesses can look like. It can be inclusive, culturally relevant, and still massively successful.