Spanx CEO and founder Sara Blakely has surprised employees with two first class plane tickets and $10,000 each to mark the company’s $1.2 billion deal with Blackstone.
CEO and founder of shapewear company Spanx has offered its employees a major award to celebrate the company’s $1.2 billion deal with Blackstone.
All employees will receive two first class Delta Airline plane tickets to travel anywhere in the world, along with $10,000 in cash to spend on the trip.
CEO Sara Blakely, 50, expressed her gratitude for the past 21 years in the business as she announced the news last week.
“To celebrate this moment, I have bought each one of you two first class tickets to anywhere in the world,” she said in a teary video posted to Instagram.
The video then pans to the reaction of the crowd as they cheered, with some bursting into tears.
“If you’re 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… So with everybody’s two first class tickets to anywhere in the world you are each getting $10,000.”
Private equity giant Blackstone last week purchased a majority of Spanx that valued the company at $1.2 billion.
Ms Blakely, who revealed she founded the company in 2000 with only $5,000 in savings, will continue to oversee operations as its executive chair.
“When I first started Spanx, I wrote a goal down and I said this company will one day be worth $20 million dollars and everybody laughed at me and you know, I said I really believe that,” she said.
“To stand here today, and [to] think about what we’ve been able to create and what we’ve been able to do by being authentic and kind and delivering amazing products to women to use their very feminine principles in a very masculine space which is business, leading with intuition, vulnerability… This marks a moment for female entrepreneurs.”
The company reportedly has around 750 employees but it is not clear if they will all receive the reward.
Article Credit: skynews