FEMFiles: Sara Blakely
Most women have heard of SPANX, the mega company that changed the way you wear your clothes, simply by giving you a modern day version of a corset. And if you’re into background stories, Sara Blakely’s is a good one, not (just) because she made it, but because she didn’t let failure or a male dominated business world stop her.
Blakely started SPANX while working as a door to door fax machine sales rep. Before that, she did a short stint at Disney, and before that? She wanted to be a lawyer, but failed the LSATs twice. In an interview on How I Built This (NPR’s awesome podcast with Guy Raz), Blakely talks about how demoralizing her job was at times, and how she often felt defeated. But something very interesting about Blakely is that she credits her success to her ability to fail. Many interviews cite her as saying that her father used to ask her what she had failed at each week, giving her the ability to view failure in a completely different way than most. And with that mindset, she took a pair of control top pantyhose, cut the feet off, and so began the story of SPANX.
Blakely tried to make her own prototype but quickly realized she needed it to be manufactured on a machine, so she went to North Carolina to present her idea to manufacturers and basically got no where. They were all men, and surprise surprise, they didn’t really get it. Blakely lucked out when one company called her back (after the male owner conferred with his three daughters) and took a chance. Blakely used her entire savings, a whopping $5000) and so the story began.
I read an article once (unfortunately I don’t remember where) how Blakely’s father would ask his kids around the dinner table how they had failed that day. Such a seemingly strange thing to do in our culture of positivity and constant success stories - but a beautiful testimony to how the small things we do as parents can also contribute to our children’s success. By normalizing failure, making it surmountable, Blakely gained an invaluable lesson that would serve as the foundation to her success. Something Blakely showed throughout the entire process was a willingness to work and an unwillingness to give up. Despite the countless manufacturers that weren’t interested, she kept calling and going. Despite not having the budget to pay for a patent claim, she did all the research, put it all together, and found a lawyer willing to help do the claim after she did most of the work. Despite not having any connections, she called (and called and called) Neiman Marcus till she got a 10 minute slot with their hosiery buyer - during which she literally invited her to the bathroom to show her ‘the product’. And even still, when Neiman Marcus decided to buy, she would essentially pretend to be an employee, hang around stores and direct people to her product. She’d even call her friends around the country and offer to pay them to buy her product, just so people would be asking for SPANX.
Her persistence, her willingness to continue despite set backs, her determination to work hard to get what she wants all lead her to be one of the best examples of female entrepreneurs, heading a company valued at over 1 Billion dollars. In October 2021, Blakely sold a majority share of SPANX after years of staying at the helm and has now pushed her net work over the billion dollar mark. This is the type of story we as women need to see and be reminded of - that it is possible and that the next billion dollar idea can come from anywhere.
She has also become known for her philanthropy, starting her own foundation, donating to Oprah’s Leadership Academy for Girls, and she’s taken Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s pledge to donate half their wealth to charity. And better yet, she’s not even 50, so we have yet to see what’s next.
Photo credit: Wikipedia; Information from Wikipedia, CNBC and NPR