Sara Blakely Of Spanx

Sara Blakely was 27, working for Danka , selling fax machines door-to-door when one day she had her ‘a-ha’ moment. She was going to a party and needed footless pantyhose to go with her outfit, so she cut the ‘feet’ off her pantyhose. And Bam! Problem solved! Somewhere in there, she’d been praying to ‘the universe’ to give her an idea that would help her make millions and touch people’s lives. She’d abandoned the idea, but when she was watching the Oprah show and heard Opera say that she too cut off the feet of her pantyhose, the spark was rekindled, almost as a confirmation that she should go ahead with her idea.

When Sara began to research undergarments for women and how they’d been made for the last 50 years, she was astonished.  From the absurd sizing protocols (only one average waist measure was used on all the products, regardless of the size of the garment), to how products were tested (on manikins not real people), Sara saw that the undergarment industry needed a female perspective – insights from a real woman wearing these items to shape the product development direction so the products were useful, effective, and as comfortable as possible.  She broke the mold, and developed a completely new approach to developing women’s undergarments. Read more of this post