Sara Blakely ideated Spanx while she was a fax machine salesperson in the late 1990s. She was getting dressed for a party and wanted to wear her white pants that had hung in her closet for months—but she didn’t have the right undergarment to wear with them.
She wanted a “smooth look” without the bulk of a classic girdle, so she cut off the feet of her control-top pantyhose—and Spanx was born.
Against the advice of her parents, boyfriend, and lawyer, Blakely signed up for a reality TV show, The Rebel Billionaire: Branson’s Quest for the Best. From 2004-2005, Blakely starred on the show hosted by British entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Richard Branson.
Blakely says she mailed her Spanx prototype and a handwritten note to media mogul Oprah Winfrey, telling her how much Winfrey had inspired her and asked her to try her invention.
In 2006, Oprah praised Blakely’s invention, and even named it as her favorite product of the year.
“Spanx really changed the way I wore clothes,” Oprah said on her show in 2006. “When Sara first came on The Oprah Show to tell us about her idea for Spanx, I knew it was brilliant. We’d all been cutting off our pantyhose for years! So from the moment I wore my first pair, they became a staple in my wardrobe.”
Blakely also admitted she paid all of her friends to go into Neiman Marcus department stores and buy her product so “it wouldn’t tank.” The product launched at Neiman Marcus in 2000. Blakely said she had just 10 minutes to first pitch Neiman Marcus and she had to buy her own flight from Atlanta to Dallas to visit the company’s buying office.
“The buying rep immediately said ‘Oh I get it. It’s brilliant—and I’m gonna put it in seven stores,” Blakley said during the Fortune MPW interview. “It was unbelievable.”
While Spanx was still in startup mode, Blakely said she shipped out orders in regular envelopes with “absolutely no tracking numbers.” Now, Spanx has its own sophisticated e-commerce site and is sold across many department stores in more than 50 countries.
Blakely also admitted she would sneak into stores where Spanx were being sold and would move the products from the back corner to right by the cash registers.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Blakely wrote.
