Sara Blakely did not have a background in fashion, retail or manufacturing when she started Spanx. She had a sales job, $5,000 in savings and an idea that came from cutting the feet off a pair of pantyhose. In 2021 the investment firm Blackstone bought a majority stake in the company at a valuation of $1.2 billion. Until that deal, Spanx had never taken money from outside investors.
The early years
Blakely was born on 27 February 1971 in Clearwater, Florida. She studied communication at Florida State University and planned to become a lawyer. That plan ended when she did poorly on the LSAT, the US law school entrance exam.
She took a three-month job at Walt Disney World in Orlando and tried stand-up comedy now and then. Then she joined Danka, an office supply company, selling fax machines door to door. It was a job full of rejection, and she got good at it. By 25 she had been promoted to national sales trainer.
The idea
The spark was a small, everyday problem. Blakely liked the smooth shape that pantyhose gave under clothes, but she did not like how they looked with open-toed shoes. So she cut the feet off a pair. It worked, and she started to wonder why nobody sold something like that.
At 27 she moved to Atlanta. She spent the next two years developing the product while keeping her day job, using $5,000 of her own savings. She wrote her own patent application instead of paying a lawyer, and bought the trademark for the name Spanx for $150. She has said in a 2025 interview with Fortune that she chose to “bet on myself” rather than raise money.
The hard part
Making the product was harder than imagining it. Blakely approached hosiery mills in North Carolina, and they turned her away. Eventually one mill operator agreed to support the idea and make it.
Getting into stores was the next problem. She managed to get a meeting with a buyer at Neiman Marcus and made her case in a very direct way: she showed the buyer how a pair of white trousers looked with and without Spanx. Neiman Marcus agreed to stock the product in seven stores. Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman followed.
Spanx officially launched in 2000, run out of her Atlanta apartment.
How it grew
A lucky break came early. Blakely sent samples to The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in November 2000 Spanx was named one of Oprah’s “Favorite Things.” Sales jumped. The company did about $4 million in sales in its first year and around $10 million in its second, according to published accounts of its history. In 2001 she signed a deal to sell on the shopping channel QVC.
The range slowly widened from shapewear into leggings, activewear, loungewear and denim. By 2011, revenue was reported at just under $250 million. Spanx opened its first own store in 2012 and later added more shops in US malls. Its products are now sold in more than 50 countries.
In 2012, Forbes put Blakely on its cover as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. A year later, in 2013, she became the first female billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge, which commits signers to give away at least half their wealth.
The Blackstone deal
In October 2021, Blackstone announced it would buy a majority stake in Spanx, valuing it at $1.2 billion. The deal closed in November 2021. The Blackstone team that worked on it was all women, and the company planned an all-female board. Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd also came in as investors.
Blakely kept a significant stake and became executive chairwoman. “I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the brand,” she said in Blackstone’s announcement. To mark the deal, she gave each of her roughly 750 employees $10,000 and two first-class plane tickets.
Where it stands now
Spanx is still based in Atlanta. In 2024, Caroline “Cricket” Whitton was named chief executive. Blakely, meanwhile, started a new footwear brand, Sneex, which makes sneakers with a heel. In April 2026, Florida State University said it would give her an honorary doctorate.
Lessons for founders
- Start with a problem you have yourself. Spanx came from Blakely’s own frustration, which made it easier to explain to buyers.
- Sales skills travel. Years of cold calls selling fax machines taught her to handle rejection and pitch in person.
- Owning your company has value. Staying free of outside investors for over 20 years let her keep control and most of the upside.
- Show, do not just tell. The white-trousers demo at Neiman Marcus did more than any slide deck could.
Reporting based on Blackstone, Spanx company history and Sara Blakely biography.
Featured image: Chuck Koehler from Cartersville, GA, USA, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
