Words by Sara Blakely turns 55 on February 27, 2026. She is best known as the founder of Spanx, the shapewear company she started in Atlanta with $5,000 in savings and no background in fashion or manufacturing.
From Clearwater to door-to-door sales
Blakely was born February 27, 1971, in Clearwater, Florida. Her mother, Ellen Ford, is an artist, and her father, John Blakely, was a personal injury lawyer. She has a brother, Ford Blakely, who is also an artist. She studied communication at Florida State University and planned to become a lawyer, but she scored poorly on the LSAT and changed course.
She spent three months working at Walt Disney World in Orlando and tried stand-up comedy on the side. Then she took a job selling fax machines door to door for the office supply company Danka. She was promoted to national sales trainer at 25.
The idea behind Spanx
The product started with a wardrobe problem. Blakely cut the feet off a pair of pantyhose so she could wear them under slacks. At 27 she moved to Atlanta and spent roughly two years developing the idea while still working at Danka.
The early steps were unglamorous. She drove to hosiery mills in North Carolina and was turned away repeatedly, until a mill operator in Asheboro agreed to back her concept. She paid a patent attorney $750 to help with her application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and $150 to register the Spanx trademark.
Neiman Marcus agreed to carry the product, initially in seven stores, and Bloomingdale’s, Saks and Bergdorf Goodman followed. In November 2000, Oprah Winfrey named Spanx one of her “Favorite Things,” and sales jumped. The company reported $4 million in sales in its first year and $10 million in its second. Blakely began selling on QVC in 2001.
In 2012, Forbes featured her as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
Blackstone deal and later ventures
In October 2021, the investment firm Blackstone bought a majority stake in Spanx, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. Blakely stayed on as executive chairwoman. Forbes put her net worth at $1.3 billion after the sale. To mark the deal, she gave each of her 750 employees $10,000 and two first-class plane tickets.
In 2015, Blakely and her husband, Jesse Itzler, joined an ownership group led by Tony Ressler that bought the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks for $850 million. Itzler co-founded the private jet company Marquis Jet. The couple married in 2008 and have four children. In 2024, Blakely introduced Sneex, a footwear brand built around high-heeled sneakers.
She has also appeared on television. She finished second on The Rebel Billionaire in 2005, where she met Richard Branson, and she was a judge on ABC’s American Inventor. Later she was a guest investor on Shark Tank in seasons nine and ten.
Philanthropy
Blakely started the Sara Blakely Foundation in 2006 to support women through education and entrepreneurial training. Branson contributed $750,000 to it, and it has funded scholarships for young women in South Africa. That year she also gave $1 million to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
In 2013 she became the first female billionaire to join the Giving Pledge. In 2019 she paid $162,500 for the black pants Olivia Newton-John wore in Grease, with the proceeds going to the singer’s cancer center in Melbourne. In 2020 she pledged $5 million to support small businesses run by women during the pandemic.
Source: Wikipedia, “Sara Blakely.”