Sarah Blakely net worth
Split: 19
What is Sara Blakely’s net worth?
Sara Blakely is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist with a net worth of US$1 billion. She is the founder of the very successful shapewear brand Spanx. In October 2021, Sara agreed to sell a majority stake in Spanx to the private equity firm Blackstone. The transaction valued the company at $1.2 billion. Sara continues to own a minority stake and oversee the company’s operations. Sara and her husband Jesse Itzler are members of The Giving Pledge, and he founded Marquis Jets. Sarah and Jesse are also minority shareholders in the NBA Atlanta Hawks.
early life
Sara Treleaven Blakely was born on February 27, 1971 in the Tampa suburb of Clearwater, Florida. Her parents Alan and John were an artist and a lawyer respectively. Her brother Ford is an artist. She graduated from Clearwater High School in 1989. She graduated from Florida State University in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. During FSU, Blakely was a member of the Delta Delta Delta Fellowship.
Sara plans to become a lawyer like her father, but her LSAT score is too low to enter law school. Instead, she went to Walt Disney World for three months and worked as a stand-up comedian in the evening.
Profession
After three months in Disney World, Blakely found a job selling fax machines for an office supplies company. She is quite good at her job and was promoted to a national sales trainer at the age of 25. Back in the 1990s, such a job meant that she had to wear professional attire, which included pantyhose. Needless to say, the heat and humidity of summer in Florida make this incredibly uncomfortable. Sara loves the control tops of pantyhose and how they remove the line of panties and make her look thinner. However, the stitched toes of the open-toed shoes annoyed her. She tried to snip her foot from her hose, but then they just rolled up her leg. There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention, which is very correct for Sara Blakely. This is why she was inspired to create Spanx.
Blakely moved to Atlanta for work when he was 27. Over the next two years, she used her savings of $5,000 to research and develop her ideas. Since most of the hosiery factories in the United States are located in North Carolina, she went there to find her own ideas and tried to find a company to make prototypes. Time and time again, she was rejected. No one understood her thoughts. Two weeks after returning to Atlanta, she received a call from a socks manufacturer in North Carolina. He has daughters, and when he told them Blakely’s ideas, they not only understood it immediately, but thought it was great. He proposed to make shapewear for Blakely.
It took a year to make the first Spanx prototype. She worked with patent agents to apply for patents. She is in charge of packaging. She then called the local Neiman Marcus buyer and arranged a meeting. During the meeting, she walked into the bathroom and put on a pair of Spanx to demonstrate the benefits of the product. This is the right move, because buyers seized the first opportunity to sell Blakely shapewear. Neiman Marcus’ first order placed 7,000 pieces and sold them in seven stores. Blakely then called her friends and family and asked them to go to Neiman Marcus to do a major event about Spanx. Soon, Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdale’s also wanted to sell Spanx.
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Blakely has personally participated in all stages of Spanx’s growth-including product positioning and marketing. Crucially, she insisted on selling Spanx in the footwear department, not in the hosiery department. This makes her product unique.
At about the same time, Blakely sent a basket of Spanx products to Oprah Winfrey’s TV show and attached a note describing her life story and how the product was born. Six weeks later, in November 2000, Oprah named Spanx “the favorite thing”, which caused the sales and market awareness of Blakely’s products to soar. At that time, Blakely finally quit her job at an office supplies company. In the first year of sales, Spanx’s product sales were 4 million U.S. dollars. In the second year, sales jumped to 10 million U.S. dollars. Blakely signed a contract with QVC in 2001 and sold 8,000 pairs of Spanx in the first six minutes they were available for purchase.
Blakely and Spanx have never spent a cent on advertising. This is a product developed entirely based on organic word-of-mouth and clever public relations. Blakely’s feeling about her product and the company she wanted to build was almost impeccable from the start. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Blakely is also a good salesperson.
Almost after Spanx took off, other companies began to eliminate shapewear and sell them at low prices. Blakely foresaw this, which is one of the reasons she chose to start with Neiman Marcus, a high-end luxury retailer. Women who shop at this price tend to be more loyal to the brand and less concerned about the price.
In 2007, Blakely collaborated with Target to launch an exclusive low-cost shapewear series called Assets by Sara Blakely, which was another smart move.
In 2017, Spanx estimated sales of 400 million U.S. dollars. Blakely owns 100% of this private company and has never received outside investment.
personal life
Blakely married Marquis Jet co-founder Jesse Itzler in Bocagrande, Florida, in 2008. The couple met at the Net Jet Poker Tournament and dated for a year before getting married. Sara and Jesse have four children.
In 2005, Blakely was a contestant for the “Rebel Billionaire”. She won second place and Richard Branson presented her with a check of $750,000 to start her foundation. She founded the Sara Blakely Foundation in 2006. The foundation helps women through education and entrepreneurship training.
Blakely joined The Giving Pledge in 2013.
She has been a guest judge for ABC’s “Shark Tank”.
In 2015, Blakely and Itzler were part of a team led by Tony Ressler, who bought the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA for $850 million.
In 2019, Blakely paid $162,500 for the black pants worn by Olivia Newton-John in “Grease.” The proceeds from the auction benefit the Newton-John Cancer Treatment Center in Melbourne, Australia.
real estate
In 2008, Blakely bought a three-bedroom, 3,093 square foot apartment at 15 Central Park West in Manhattan for $12.11 million. She sold it for $30 million in 2014.
