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Spanx is getting a boost of star power as Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon join forces to become investors in the shapewear darling.
The Hollywood A-listers join private equity behemoth Blackstone, which on Thursday closed its previously announced majority investment in Spanx valuing the company at $1.2 billion, Blackstone said.
Winfrey helped put the slimming undergarment on the map 21 years ago, when she named it one of her favorite products of the year.
When Spanx founder Sara Blakely “first came on The Oprah Show to tell us about her idea for SPANX, I knew it was brilliant,” the media mogul said in a statement.
“We’d all been cutting off our panty hose for years! So from the moment I wore my first pair, they became a staple in my wardrobe.”
Oprah’s seal of approval has helped countless brands, including WW International — formerly named Weight Watchers — in which she took a 10 percent stake in 2015 and joined its board, sending its shares soaring.
Each time she plugged the wellness company, sharing details about her own weight loss, the company gained more customers and its shares spiked.
The combination of Winfrey and Witherspoon shilling for Spanx has the potential to put it in more lingerie drawers than ever before.
“In addition to developing a remarkable product and business that literally supports women every day,” Witherspoon said in a statement, “Sara has become a role model for leveraging your success to elevate other women.”
Witherspoon is the founder of entertainment company Hello Sunshine, which produced HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” Apple’s “The Morning Show” and Oscar-nominated thriller “Gone Girl,” and was recently sold for $900 million to a firm also backed by Blackstone Group, which put the “Legally Blonde” actress on the board of its newly created media company.
Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is also joining the Hollywood stars as an investor in Spanx, Blackstone said.
The Spanx management team, along with Blakely, will continue to oversee daily operations, Blackstone said, adding that it intends to create an all-female board of directors for Spanx.
The brand will surely need all the attention it can get as rival Skims — the Kim Kardashian shapewear brand — that is valued at $1.6 billion after just two years continues to rake in oodles of sales, including $1 million which it generated in one minute with a new Fendi collaboration.
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