"Success Story": Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx

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Sara Blakely offers each of her 750 employees, all women, two first class plane tickets for anywhere in the world, and an envelope of $ 10,000!

The "best boss in the world", as some qualify in the United States, shares her profits with those to whom she must, she says, her success.

Sara Blakely, is the symbol of American dream.Daughter of a mother artist and a lawyer settled in Florida, this great jovial blonde misses her law studies.What does it matter.She goes on odd jobs, and doors to sell fax.She is even a humorist time!But dressing in the morning is a story so she has fun cutting her tights to refine her buttocks and her legs.The idea germinates and she decides to invest all her savings, $ 5,000, to make her first sheathing panties in Atlanta in Georgia.

Sara Blakely recounts her debut on the CNBC television channel."I didn't know what to wear under most of my clothes!"My underwear did not go, we saw them through everything I wore.In short, I was a frustrated consumer.I had not done a business school, but I wanted to invent 'the' underwear that was going to galber my figure.When I got back to the tights factory twenty years ago, to make a prototype, I realized that I was the only woman in the building!It amazed me.I said to myself then: these are the women I want to emancipate through sculpting underwear much more practical and comfortable than those who are made by people who do not wear them all day!This is how Spanx has become the basis of our wardrobes.»»

Blackstone enters dance

But the success is not immediate.The look of the certainly comfortable underwear is not a seller ... Sara Blakely must hang on to convince stores.Until big names adopts it. La célèbre animatrice de télévision Oprah Winfrey en fait la pub dans son talk-show, même l’ancienne Première Dame, Michelle Obama, avoue porter les « Spanx»» avec fierté.Sales take off.Today, Spanx are also pants, sportswear, a range for men.

What interest the Blackstone fund which acquires in October a majority part of the company valuing it to more than a billion dollars.

Ann Chung, who led the negotiations for Blakestone, says. « Ce que nous avons vu en Spanx, c’est une marque incroyable ! Lorsque Sara et moi étions en discussion, elle nous a révélé que les femmes disent le plus souvent qu’elles sont reconnaissantes que Spanx existe»», explique Ann Chung sur CNBC."This strong, authentic emotional link between a brand and a consumer is very rare today.To this is added the exceptional growth of the company, the united team that Sara has formed around it.There is also the launch of the new SPANX products and the digital transformation of the company… (the SPANX online sales site.com experienced enormous growth and this well before the pandemic, editor's note.) This is a solid base, from which we can build.»»

It will have taken twenty years so that Sara Blakely lets go… So why now?

"It has been twenty years since people have offered to buy spanx or invest in the business, but as I still act with my guts, I told myself that I will know when it is the right time.I also feared to be mistaken in the choice of an investor.But when I met the Blackstone team, I found that we were in line on the future of the brand, the desire to contribute to the emancipation of women with fully female staff.It reassured me to approach this new turning point for the brand.»»

Apart from business, this mother of four, married to rapper and entrepreneur Jesse Itzler, launched a solidarity fund to support the education of girls around the world and help women get into business.

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