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Inventor Story: Sara Blakely
Blakely was a national sales manager for a fax machine company and an amateur comedian. One night before going on stage, she decided she wanted to wear cream colored pants with opened toe shoes, but everything she put on under her pants showed lines, so she cut the feet off of her panty hose. The panty hose kept on rolling up her leg that night, but she realized she was on to something.
She talked to friends who thought it was a great idea and then visited stores to see if any thing like footless panty hose existed. The clerks all thought it was a great idea, but no one had ever heard about a product like that. So Blakely got to work.
It took her two years to perfect the design, write her own patent and trademark her name before she was ready to start production. She cold called hosiery mills and finally found a manufacturer to produce her product. He thought the idea was crazy, like the other plant managers Blakely called, but he had two daughters who thought the idea was great.
Blakely was determined to stay self-funded, and only had $5,000 to invest in her product. So instead of advertising, which she thought isn’t effective anyway, she used the media to launch her product. She sent out press releases to news services and samples to celebrities and other trend setters. This approached worked well. Oprah declared Blakely’s footless panty hose as her product of the year and sales started booming.
One secret to Blakely’s success with the media is her brand name: Spanx. She wanted an edgy name that would get people talking, and that’s exactly the kind of name Spanx is. DJ’s and talk show hosts liked the name and thought is was funny, winning Blakely a lot more free exposure.
Her packaging is in the same vein, with the company’s slogan being: “We’ve got your butt covered”. In a sea of neutral colored panty hose packaging, Blakely went with bright red, defying industry convention, but grabbing consumers’ attention.
During her media campaign, Blakely has already landed major department stores across the country and now buyers were calling her to get Spanx in their stores.
Finally to support her in-store sales, Blakely personally went to stores to talk up her product and show it off to every woman passing by. She also called all her friends across the country to talk up the product and go and buy some. Even as the company has grown, they still use this tactic to raise awareness of the products.
So what can we learn from Blakely? We can learn the importance of branding and packaging your product. Many inventors make these only after thoughts, but these can be the difference between a blah product and a trendy, must-have product. Also, clearly media can be an inexpensive and effective way to reach the masses. And I think that overall we see how creativity and hard work can make up for a lack of funding and industry experience.
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