‘I do believe Spanx is about more than comfort’
By Elizabeth Fournier, FOX Business
You’ve probably heard the hype about Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon investing in Spanx, the women’s underwear brand that is changing the way women feel about their curves. But it turns out there’s more than one reason.
Spanx has made history in recent years by developing stylish intimates that super-slimming the bottom half of women’s bodies.
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A decade ago, Spanx branched out from the underwear market, moving into socks, hats, even gardening gloves. New shapes and colors allow women of all shapes and sizes to dress up their wardrobes.
The company reported a 33% increase in sales to $220 million in 2015. But at some point it started to put pressure on margins. While its business may have grown and operating margins doubled to 14% in the last five years, margins in the panty area remained stagnant.
Spanx’s CEO, Sara Blakely, decided to take the company private last year, when she announced she would split the company into three. As she saw it, a new generation of American women—who are grappling with the idea of owning a house and having kids and who are on a constant quest to feel more confident— needed professional brands that emulated their values.
“You’re living a life, and you’re working, and you want to be able to go out and be the best you can be,” she said in a recent phone interview.
The brands she’s building are designed for an individual lifestyle—all of which resonate with young women’s desire to make a mark in the world.
“This generation is such a unique generation, which is why I think it’s becoming so mainstream to do business in this way,” Blakely said.
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Blakely is no stranger to transforming her businesses in business-in-a-box fashion. She re-branded herself from Sara Blakely to Sara Blakely International in 2007, the company she founded as a teenage high school student. The model jeans maker transformed her image into an entrepreneur, designing a line of clothes for tweens, teenagers and young women and then developing things that would allow children to be eco-friendly.
As a brand for mature women, Spanx has a distinct approach. Customers start at the bottom, as the Spanx thong makes the front half of a woman’s body, or buttock, disappear. The front section is done up with beautiful fabrics, like silk and luxury cashmere, so women’s minds don’t have to go there. The back half—the hips, shoulders and thighs—remain untouched.
But is that too much of a basic, push-up-your-back-side? According to Consumer Reports, not all customers are happy about it, prompting women to buy multiple pairs of Spanx for different areas of their bodies.
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However, two influential women have fallen victim to slipping under the Spanx, one in the hip and one in the buttock area. The hip dislocated, and Blakely says the buttock dislocated into the lower abdomen.
Both patients were “so, so relieved” that they were able to get the adhesive inserted in order to have a normal vaginal prolapse. Doctors have known of the issue for a long time, but they said it was never seen before as so effective a product.
Blakely said that she wishes she could have made Spanx a more known brand even more, allowing its long-term growth to grow at a slower rate as she has been focused on getting the company separated and re-launched, using the sale of a 45% stake to Oprah to further bolster the company’s balance sheet.