Kim Kardashian's shapewear company Skims is offering refunds for a $148 advent calendar after a wave of mockery on social media, the BBC reported. The accessories calendar promised "twelve days of fun surprises," but users compared the contents — hair clips, keychains, and similar items — to things found down the back of a sofa. A Skims spokesperson told media outlets that "for some, the calendar didn't meet expectations" and that the company had "personally contacted every customer" to offer a full refund or store credit. The BBC said it had contacted Skims for comment.
Kardashian co-founded the business in 2019, and Forbes has described her as a billionaire on the back of it. Skims was valued at $5 billion in 2025 after a funding round. Online, the reaction was blunt. One TikTok account compared the contents to things "my cat collects from around my house." Another said it looked like "a bunch of stuff that Kim Kardashian was emptying out of her bedside table." Several users filmed themselves cleaning out sofas and joked that they had accidentally created the same calendar.
Kate Vlietstra, a senior director at market researcher Mintel, told the BBC the backlash was "really interesting" and part of a broader pattern tied to unboxing videos. If people do not feel they are getting the value they hoped for, she said, they now have an immediate public way to say so. According to Ipsos research cited in the report, shoppers will pay more for an advent calendar if the contents justify the price. A £285 calendar from Liberty, for example, is "very open about the value of the contents" and tells buyers there is more than £1,000 worth of product inside, the report said.
The Skims calendar's daily items, as listed by the BBC, were: a tartan teddy-bear key chain; hair ties; more hair ties; Skims logo hair clips; a Skims logo squishy ornament; more logo hair clips; beige elastic straps or hair bands; still more logo hair clips; a logo comb keychain; more hair ties; a Skims keychain; and a furry compact-mirror keychain. The verified story is a high-priced promotional product, a public mismatch between price and perceived value, and a company decision to offer refunds or credit, not a collapse of the brand. Unboxing videos have made that kind of mismatch harder for companies to contain, because a $148 box can be opened, filmed, and mocked within hours of arriving, long before a traditional returns desk would have quietly absorbed the complaints.