Typically, office rewards might comprise of £3 bottles of wine and tins of biscuits, but some bosses, such as the founder of Spanx, go above and beyond when dishing out employee rewards.
This week, Sara Blakely celebrated Spanx being valued at $1.2 billion after investment firm Blackstone snapped up a majority stake in the brand.
To mark the massive milestone, the 50-year-old businesswoman gifted all of her employees an incredibly generous treat — two first-class tickets to anywhere in the world, as well as $10,000 spending money.
Sara Blakely sold fax machines door-to-door and started Spanx with $5,000 in savings & no experience.
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) October 23, 2021
She never raised money & has now sold a majority stake in the brand at a $1.2 billion valuation.
The best part?
The gift she gave her 500+ employees to celebrate.
Amazing 🙏 pic.twitter.com/JvdpbgVWX5
During a staff meeting where she announced the sale and partnership with Blackstone, she teased her employees by jesting: “Why am I spinning the globe?” as she pawed at a globe ornament.
Staff didn’t have to wait long, however.
“I have bought each one of you two first class tickets to anywhere in the world,” she said.
Staff cheered as she continued: “If you go on a trip you might want to go out to a really nice dinner, you might want to go out to a really nice hotel, and so with everybody’s two first-class tickets to anywhere in the world you are each getting $10,000.”
The video shows how the staff members reacted, with some cheering while others cried happy tears.
Spanx’s $1.2 billion valuation is a far cry from where Blakely started out in 2000, kickstarting the brand with just $5,000 in savings.
She said that when she first started her company, she wrote a goal down on her whiteboard. The goal was for her company to one day be worth $20 million. People laughed at her, she said.
During the announcement, Blakely cracked out her old “lucky red backpack” she took everywhere when she first started Spanx at college. The bag is also the namesake for Blakely’s Red Backpack Fund which helps other female entrepreneurs in the wake of the pandemic.
Speaking at the event, Blakely also said that although now is a good time for female entrepreneurs, she said there isn’t enough funding or support behind female-led enterprises. She said that although 50 per cent of entrepreneurs are women, only 2.3 per cent of venture capital funding goes towards women.
Addressing the room, she said: “This is a very big moment for each and every one of you, and I want to also toast the women that came before me and all of the women in the world who have not had this opportunity. So at a moment like this, I think of my mom and my grandmother and their lack of options and all the women that came before them.”
