Spanx founder's look-good feel-good story

With a Good Morning America production crew trailing her through her new Spanx boutique at King of Prussia Mall, shapewear tycoon Sara Blakely was nowhere near rock bottom Friday morning.

No, rock bottom had come and gone 20 years earlier, in the form of a brown polyester spacesuit at Walt Disney World, when the would-be lawyer dealt with her dashed dream of law school by taking a job herding kids onto rides.

At the East Coast's largest shopping mall Friday, the 41-year-old entrepreneur instead lived up to her Forbes magazine billing as the youngest self-made billionaire who is not a man. After a drive from New York, she dabbed on lipstick and sashayed among bras, fishnets, and other elastic creations she has invented for women plagued by pantyline phobias.

"Don't underestimate women who want their butt to look better in white pants!" Blakely later shouted to Spanx fans waiting behind a red-carpet rope for the 10 a.m. opening. She high-fived chief executive Laurie Ann Goldman before the power pair snipped a ribbon of hosiery to mark the Atlanta company's latest effort to build on global ambitions.

Yes, Spanx is expanding, and business is booming as far away as South Korea. Yes, its new boutiques mean Spanx will no longer rely only on department stores and others to sell its wares. And speculating whether Blakely will ever take her company public remains a ritual among those who imagine the riches such a move would bring.

But what is truly astounding about Spanx is Blakely herself - and not just for the cha-ching factor of her net worth, accumulated since inventing Spanx as a 27-year-old fax-machine saleswoman with the idea to snip panty hose at the ankles.

Blakely's backstory is built as much on a backbone hardened by struggle as on her innate merchant's sense of how to sell things, rely on intuition and risk, and see herself in the soul and soles of the customer she courts.

"You could do a case study on me, on how somebody who has absolutely no idea how to get this done would do it," Blakely said in an interview Thursday night.

"I did follow my gut, time and time again, and my intuition led me in the right direction. Over and over again."

Blakely's journey from obscurity to Hollywood-and-fashion-world darling (she got a shout-out during a recent episode of NBC's 30 Rock) began with a childhood in Clearwater, Fla., where shorts and bathing suits were daily dress 11 months a year.

Girdles, as shapewear had been known before disappearing a decade before the coming-of-age of Generation Xers such as Blakely, were as scarce as snow.

The daughter of a trial attorney, she relished watching her dad deliver closing arguments in court.

"I had been planning to be a lawyer since I was 8 years old," said Blakely, who went on to win debate tournaments through high school and graduated with a degree in legal communications from Florida State.

But then she took the standardized tests for law school admission. Blakely scored low twice. There would be no law career.

She was devastated.

"I drove to Disney World and tried out to be Goofy," she said, with a tinge of humor about an otherwise painful time. "And just to add insult to injury, you have to be 5-8 to be Goofy, and I was 5-6, so they wanted to make me a chipmunk."

She took a job escorting people onto a moving sidewalk at Epcot Center. She won the chipmunk job, too, but didn't stick around long enough to fill the costume.

Landing the chipmunk gig? It was funny how she did it, through American Idol-like tryouts. Finalists advanced by impressing with improv.

"I'm waiting in a room of 25 people," she recalled. Someone whispered this scenario in her ear: " 'You're Minnie Mouse shopping and got to the register and realized you don't have money and a credit card.' "

Go!

On another round, she was Goofy camping in the woods with a flat tire.

Why, one might ask, did she not just walk out then and there?

"This is what you call rock bottom," Blakely said, again with a laugh. "I was very upset. . . . I think I was just completely escaping reality."

Embarrassment led her to cut the cord in three months. One too many college friends had run into her in costume - though it had had its moments.

"I went on break and saw Snow White dragging on a cigarette," Blakely said, revealing the humor that would inspire her to spend the next few years doing comedy.

For her next day job, Blakely chose masochism: door-to-door fax saleswoman.

The rejection of making cold calls was, at times, so intense, she would cry in her car or loop motivational cassette tapes to keep it together.

"People ripped up my business card in my face once a week," Blakely said. "I got escorted out of buildings."

"As if I wasn't getting enough abuse during the day," she added, "I was doing stand-up comedy at night."

But Blakely had a gift for the job. She developed a steely resolve, rising to the post of national trainer for her company.

"You either survive or you don't," she said. "I had to sell $20,000 worth of fax machines in four zip codes in Clearwater, Florida, with 100 percent cold calling."

Perfect prep for the lightning bolt.

"I had spent $98 on cream pants from Arden B. in the mall . . . which was a lot of money to me at the time," she said. "I was a size 2 at the time, but I had some cellulite on the back of each thigh."

A size 2 with cellulite? Really?

"Let me tell you something," she retorted. "Cellulite does not discriminate."

She threw on panty hose, cut off the feet, and felt great about how she looked. An idea was born.

With $5,000 to invest, Blakely researched and wrote her own patent. Still selling faxes, she worked for two grueling years to get her product made in the male-dominated, volume-driven mill industry.

"I was trying to convince these men to stop their machines and make this one little item," she said. After many rejections, she landed a deal.

But how to get it out to more customers? Blakely called a Neiman Marcus store in Atlanta. Would they stock her shapewear?

"They laughed at me," and said only buyers at the luxury department store's Dallas headquarters made such decisions.

So Blakely called Dallas. Coaxing, after all, was her thing. She won an in-person meeting and, after that, the account.

"I started meeting other entrepreneurs who were trying to get into Neiman's for years." Their question always: How in the world did you get into Neiman's?

"I said, 'I just called them.' "

Everyone else? They were going to trade shows and not getting very far. "I didn't even know these trade shows existed," Blakely said.

She and her company are far from media-shy. Her meteoric rise has commanded considerable ink. Tales abound about how she kept doing things right: landing on Oprah; persuading QVC to showcase her stuff without selling it at discount; picking the perfectly saucy moniker (she got hate mail at first for the mildly naughty Spanx name). She also nailed it by picking Spanx's trademark-red packaging color.

But not all went smoothly. She almost lost her business just as it was taking off.

In 2001, her manufacturer no longer wanted to handle the small Spanx contract, so he punted her other mill contacts. Blakely picked a new one but didn't adequately research its financial health. The mill filed for bankruptcy.

"They gave me five days' notice that they were shutting their doors," Blakely said, "and they were the only outfit making Spanx." She scrambled and somehow survived a drastic loss of product.

The next year she hired the woman who would become, and remain, chief executive: Coca-Cola licensing and retail veteran Goldman. How they met is yet another lesson in scrapping the business-school rule book.

Goldman was at an Atlanta Bloomingdale's complaining about not being able to find a Spanx product in her size after three trips to the store.

"You really need to . . . get your supply chain right," Goldman lectured a salesperson. Nearby was Blakely's then-boyfriend, who happened to be making a delivery. He introduced himself, got an earful - and Goldman's number.

A relationship was born. Blakely would name Goldman CEO in 2002.

Today, the duo steer a workforce of more than 160 employees, most of them women. They've introduced less expensive shapewear lines at Target, J.C. Penney, and Kohl's and are opening their own boutiques, with Goldman's guidance. King of Prussia is among the first three.

"I love working with women," Blakely said. "I find women roll up their sleeves to get the job done. They're multitaskers."

Goldman is no exception. "I was mopping the floors and vacuuming at our last store opening," she said of Spanx's recent debut in Tysons Corner, Va.

Blakely, she said, is a great leader. But her intuition sets her apart, for sure.

"I think women pay more attention to and value their intuitive skills as a business skill," Goldman said. "I just think men historically have valued networking more."

In that sense, intuition breeds greater risk-taking in business. Not a shabby skill if you're looking to craft a new dream out of a dashed one.

"Sara and I are both risk-takers," Goldman agreed.

Blakely once tackled a fear of heights by climbing a rope ladder up the side of a hot-air balloon. But she described her good fortune in different terms:

"I feel like when you're really, really on the right path, the universe really starts helping you out, and things start falling into place."

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