Great grasp on figures

Sara Blakely's Spanx range has earned her a spot on Forbes' list of richest people. She may have made her fortune sucking in fat tummies, but Spanx tycoon Sara Blakely has no hang-ups about her own body. The glamorous American entrepreneur has been the brand's pin-up since she started the company a decade ago and regularly strips down to her smalls in the boardroom to road-test the latest "magic" bra and pant prototypes that will, literally, ensnare consumers with their hidden suction panels that promise "butt boosting" and "back fat banishing" qualities. Determination pays off Blakely has spent the past decade hawking the lingerie brand to anyone who would listen — and her hard-headed determination has paid off, big time. The entrepreneur makes the cover of business magazine Forbes annual "World Billionaires" issue, which celebrates the orgy of wealth that is the "1,226 richest people on the planet". Her $1-billion (Dh3.67-billion) fortune hardly takes her to the top of the list, ranking her at 1,153 out of the lucky 1,226, but this heralds her arrival in the business premier league and breathes fresh air into the stuffy annual survey that remains a male stronghold of usual suspects such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investment sage Warren Buffett. At 41, she is the youngest woman to join this year's billionaires list without help from a husband or an inheritance. At the last count, Spanx sales had reached $250 million (Dh918.3 million) with Wall Street bankers reckoning that the business could be worth $1 billion, raising the tantalising prospect that Blakely could sell shares in the company. Her business is admired all the more as it has no debt and has never had to court outside investors for cash to fund its expansion. How it all began The Spanx legend goes that Blakely spotted a lucrative gap in the market after being unable to buy underwear that wouldn't show through her cream-coloured trousers. To solve the problem, she cut the feet out of a pair of tights and, in doing so, caused one of the biggest waves in lingerie circles since 1913 — when Mary Jacobs stitched together some silk handkerchiefs and called it a "backless brassiere". Blakely is not an overnight success, having twice failed the law exams that prevented her from following in her father's footsteps. Disillusioned, she ended up working at Disney World, near her family's Florida home. "I would see friends I hadn't seen for a while and I'd be wearing these big Mickey Mouse ears with my name on," she recalls. "They'd say, ‘Sara, is that you?' And I'd reply, ‘Yes, now get on the ride.'" Her next job, selling photocopiers and fax machines for an office equipment supplier, also lacked glamour, but she would spend seven years honing the killer sales patter that has made Spanx an international success story. She got the idea for Spanx in 1999, but did not launch the company until 2000, sinking her entire $5,000 savings into the enterprise, which had the spare room of her Atlanta apartment as its headquarters. "Every-thing grew out of that original $5,000," she says. Hollywood's big secret Spanx has some unlikely devotees, with some of the most famous, and slim, women in the world, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Beyoncé, relying on a bit of extra oomph from its power pants. The brand has been described as "Hollywood's big secret". The company launched "Spanx for Men" after it cottoned on to why Hollywood agents were requesting extra-large sizes. Men can now buy "gut gauge" T-shirts and briefs with the gentle promise to "cup, support and lift". It took someone with a battle with their weight to give Blakely her break, though. She sent samples to Oprah Winfrey, a bright idea that saw the brand name-checked on the TV star's favourite things in her show in 2000. After that, the company never looked back; it was profitable from Day 1, turning over $4 million (Dh15 million) in its first year and $10 million (Dh37 million) the next. Today Spanx has 125 staff, with the day-to-day running handled by chief executive Laurie Ann Goldman, a former Coca-Cola executive who joined the company in 2002 as a consultant. Several years ago, a "feminist photo shoot" in a US magazine sparked a debate over whether wearing Spanx was a symbol of oppression in a body-obsessed culture. Whatever the finer points of the argument, there are now more than 200 Spanx products on sale in 40 countries. But despite her wealth, Blakely keeps her feet on the ground: "Money makes you more of who you already are. If you're bad, you become worse. If you're nice, you become nicer." From: Gulfnews