Sara Blakely, an American businesswoman and founder of shapewear brand, Spanx, has made history as one of the youngest women on Forbes World Billionaires list for 2012&2013 and has become the first female billionaire to join the Giving Pledge, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s bid to encourage the world’s richest people to give at least half their wealth to charity, reports Forbes magazine
Sara Blakely, founder of shapewear brand Spanx, has become the first female billionaire to join the Giving Pledge, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s bid to encourage the world’s richest people to give at least half their wealth to charity, Forbes magazine has reported.
The Gates Foundation announced Blakely’s pledge alongside eight other new signatories, taking the Giving Pledge tally to 114 since its 2010 inception.
Blakely, the youngest self-made woman on Forbes’ Billionaires list at 42, was approached to commit her wealth to philanthropy by Bill Gates himself.
“After I appeared on the cover of Forbes, I got a call from Bill Gates’ office, saying Bill Gates wanted to have dinner with me,” she said.
After a meal in Miami with Gates, his wife and Pledge co-founder, Melinda Gates and several other couples, Blakely spent months mulling it over.
“I’m at a slightly different stage in my journey,” she said, noting that Spanx remains a privately-held company (she owns 100 per cent of it). “I haven’t monetised the bulk of my wealth. But I have been setting aside profits every year, as I always knew I wanted to do something like this.”
Blakely has come a long way since age 29, when she invested her entire life savings, $5,000, trying to come up with something flattering to wear under her white slacks. Six months later, the one-time Disney World ride greeter found her new line of shaping underwear named one of Oprah’s Favourite Things. Since then, Blakely has taken Spanx from a one-product wonder sold out of her Atlanta apartment to a powerhouse with over $250 million in annual revenues and net profit margins estimated at 20 per cent.
Today Spanx is to slimming undergarments what Kleenex is to tissues. Lately, four Wall Street investment banks separately valued Spanx at an average $1 billion, a sum Forbes corroborated with the help of industry analysts. Blakely owns 100 per cent of the private company, has zero debt, has never taken outside investment and hasn’t spent a nickel on advertising.
At 42, she has made history as one of the youngest woman on Forbes World’s Billionaires list without help from a husband or an inheritance. Blakely is part of a tiny, elite club of American women worth 10 figures on their own, including Oprah Winfrey and Meg Whitman.
Over the last couple of years, Spanx has depended less on Blakely’s face—and other body parts—to shift its shapers and stay ahead of a handful of copycats.
The company is now run by a team of 125, only 16 of them men. It sells 200 products in 11,500 department stores, boutiques and online shops in 40 countries. Distributors worldwide clamour to get on the stockist.
In her career to date, Blakely’s philanthropy has been focused on helping women and girls, with some early guidance from her friend and mentor, Richard Branson,who, incidentally, became the first Briton to join the Pledge in February.
She recently gave $100,000 to The Empowerment Plan, a humanitarian campaign based in Detroit, United States that specialises in creating jobs for homeless women by paying them to produce sleeping-bag coats for others sleeping on the streets.
The young billionaire hopes her Giving Pledge membership will allow for more encounters with humanitarians, as well as guidance from seasoned philanthropists in Gates and Buffett’s circle. “It’s such an amazing opportunity for me to learn,” she said.
Writing a letter explaining her decision to the Gates Foundation which it was gathered will be displayed on the Giving Pledge website alongside those written by previous signatories, Blakley said,“It was very emotional, writing it. When I read it out loud, I cried. I have so much gratitude for being a woman in America. I wouldn’t have had these opportunities if I wasn’t born in the right place at the right time.”
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