Age: 42
Source of Wealth : Spanx, Self Made
Country of Citizenship: USA
Net Worth: $1 Billion (March-2013) (forbes)
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Sara Blakely (born February 21, 1971) is an American businesswoman. In 2000, Blakely founded Spanx, a multi-million dollar undergarment company.[2] She is the world's youngest self-made female billionaire.[wikipedia.org]
[Time: March 8, 2012]
Fifteen years ago and still in her 20s, Clearwater native
Sara Blakely had an idea for a line of pantyhose that smoothed her clothes but
left legs and feet bare for open shoes.
Who knew that concept
would transform her into the world's youngest self-made female billionaire?
Forbes magazine so anointed her Wednesday in publishing its
annual list of the world's billionaires. Blakely is not only on that list but
on Forbes' cover.
"I can't hear
that I am on that list without laughing," Blakely said in a phone
interview from New York City. "I can't help but think of the days when my
job was to cold call people in Clearwater to try and sell them fax machines and
how many of them said 'No, no, no.' "
When Blakely sought a
patent attorney in the late 1990s to help copyright her idea for a product
saucily called Spanx, he scoffed, asking "Am I on Candid Camera?"
"For the first
year, everyone was telling me I was crazy," Blakely said. Now everyone's
telling her she's rich. Crazy rich.
Blakely, now 41, is
the sole owner of her private, debt-free Spanx shapewear company in Atlanta.
Forbes credits Blakely's shapewear company for "reinventing the
girdle."
The youngest woman to
join this year's list without help from a husband or an inheritance, Blakely is
now part of a tiny, elite club of American women worth 10 figures on their own.
Among them: TV phenom Oprah Winfrey ($2.7 billion) and current HP (and former
eBay) CEO Meg Whitman ($1.4 billion).
On Wednesday, Spanx
public relations' team was inundated with media calls for Blakely. She wrapped
up a BBC interview before calling me at her hometown paper. She is scheduled to
appear Thursday morning live on both CBS' This Morning and ABC's Good Morning
America. An interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC's World News will be broadcast
Friday, she said.
Hitting $1 billion in
net worth seems to be the entry fee to a new level of fame.
Years before Spanx,
Blakely graduated from Clearwater High School and then Florida State University
in 1993. She considered going to law school but instead drove to Disney and
tried out to be Goofy. She was 2 inches short of the 5-foot-8 height
requirement. Then she worked seven years for Tampa office equipment firm Danka
Business Systems. It was a "humbling experience" that Blakely says
helped toughen her sales skills and laid a foundation for the success of Spanx.
"I was given
four ZIP codes in Clearwater and a cubicle and told to sell $20,000 worth of
fax machines a month," she recalled. That, plus a standup comedy hobby
that she used to market the Spanx name in funny ways, would help get her
business off the ground.
Blakely was
transferred to Atlanta — Tampa Bay's big loss, in hindsight — where the Spanx
firm would later be founded.
Now the Spanx line of
200 different body-shaping undergarments can be found in 35 countries and
stores ranging from Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom to Saks Fifth Avenue and the
Sports Authority. (There's also a line of Spanx for men.)
Blakely is one of
1,226 billionaires on this year's global list. She just squeezed on to the
rankings along with 73 others with a net worth of $1 billion.
Blakely lives with
her husband and son in Atlanta but also owns a home in La Jolla, Calif., and a
Central Park West apartment in Manhattan. Blakely bought property last year on
Clearwater Beach for a future home so that she can be near her mother and
grandmother, as well as many childhood friends.
"There's still a
close-knit network of friends there for me, but we never talk about
money," she said. "When they see the Forbes story, they're going to
say 'Oh my God.' "
Did Blakely even
realize she was a billionaire before Forbes told her? Yes, she said. "But
Forbes putting it on paper makes it more real."
This is probably the
start of something new. We're going to see a lot more women entrepreneurs on
the Forbes billionaire lists in the coming years.
Blakely wants to help
nurture that trend. Her advice to young women with an entrepreneurial itch?
"Trust your
gut," she said. Blakely purposely did not tell anyone about her initial
legless pantyhose idea for an entire year because she did not want to have to
defend it or be talked out of it. It took two years just to persuade a hosiery
mill to even make an initial run of her product.
That, she said, is
one reason Spanx exists.
"Don't be
intimidated by what you don't know," she counsels. "That can be your
greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone
else."
This isn't the last
we've heard of Sara Blakely. Her humor-tinged biography on the Spanx website
may say it best: "Putting her butt on the line pays off!"
[Original source of this article is www.tampabay.com and written by Robert Trigaux, ]
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