Sara Blakely is the founder and CEO of Spanx, the lifestyle brand of bodywear which made her a billionaire. The 46-year-old mother of four is the fourth Guest Shark to appear on Shark Tank’s Season 9. (Blakely’s mentor Sir Richard Branson of Virgin was the first. Former baseball player Alex Rodriguez and branding guru Rohan Oza have been guests in the Tank too.) For Blakely’s appearance, she sits between fellow billionaire Mark Cuban and Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary. She wore a sweet pink short-sleeved blouse with ribbons and big buttons and a black skirt. See photo above. While promoting her appearance on Shark Tank, Blakely went on ABC’s morning talk show Good Morning America. The stylish Blakely wore another fitting outfit but this time she wore it backwards! See her post below. Blakely tagged the televised event as “a blonde moment.” Even though “the collar was choking me,” Blakely wore it well and with good humor.
Blakely is the founder of Spanx, which is the lifestyle brand of shapewear. Blakely pretty much singlehandedly created the category and Spanx is a case study in nearly every business school in the country. As the Harvard Business Review wrote, equating Spanx with Under Armour for its category-defining penetration: “sometimes category creation involves dreaming up a new class of products that can be sold using traditional methods. Consider Sara Blakely’s creation of Spanx and Kevin Plank’s creation of Under Armour, $1 billion–plus brands that used new fabrics to reinvent the way consumers think about girdles and T-shirts.” In other words, Sara Blakely can wear her dress any way she wants. It’s never really backwards. Shark Tank airs Sundays at 9pm on ABC.
