The Story of Sara Blakely

From our friends at Success Magazine.

One of our faves around here is Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who is profiled in this month’s Success. See how her ideas can help improve your bottom line! >:)

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Success Stories

Beth Douglas Silcox, Success Magazine

Plain and simple, Sara Blakely wanted her bottom to look better in white pants. She was 27 and peddling fax machines to businesses, making cold-call after cold-call, facing way too many slamming doors. But at this moment, standing in her tiny Atlanta apartment, scissors in hand, she teetered on the verge of invention. One-size-fits-no-one pantyhose didn’t do the job, so Blakely lopped off the feet with two, crisp snips.

Eight years after Blakely amputated the feet of her pantyhose, her brainchild, Spanx, exceeds $300 million in retail sales. She has expanded into other types of shape wear to smooth other problem areas for women. Meantime, her footless hosiery invention revitalized an industry and answered the prayers of women everywhere who wanted to look better in all of their clothes.

Stepping from idea to prototype, she mustered every bit of perseverance and charm learned in her door-to- door years. “If you make someone laugh or smile in the first five to 10 seconds, you might get another 10 seconds,” Blakely says. Authenticity was crucial, as she pitched her idea to hosiery mill executives.

Before Spanx, the male-dominated $2 billion hosiery industry regarded pantyhose as cosmetic and simply accentuated the shine, color or smoothness of women’s legs. “I found, as a consumer, how seriously they were all trying to take pantyhose was ridiculous,” Blakely says.

By contrast, Blakely was pragmatic about her hosiery invention. Spanx would be More . . .

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Click on the items below to read more about her:

=How Failure Molded Spanx’s Founder (Business Week) 

=Spanx FounderSara Blakely on Luck, Gwyneth Paltrow and Wearing Wigs (The Huffington Post)

=The Story of Spanx (Spanx Website)

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Picture Credit: Success Magazine