I presented my idea to them, you could see me trying to explain to the men how I'm gonna change the world, and make women's butts better, and that this is gonna be an idea that everyone would love.
And the one attorney kept looking around the room, and I later found out why. He admitted to me, he said, "Sara, I thought when I first met you, that your idea was so bad that I thought you had been sent by Candid Camera. So I decided to write my own patent.
No one's talking to me on the phone, so I took a week off of work, at the company I was working for, and I drove around North Carolina in person, to try to convince somebody to help make my idea. And the first, I met with several hosiery mills, and they all asked the same question. I'd walk in to the mill with my lucky red backpack, and they would always say, "And you are And they go, "And you're with They go, "And you're financially backed by And after cold-calling these mills for one week, I went back to Atlanta with no luck, and two weeks after I made that trip in person to all the hosiery mills, I got a phone call from one of the mill owners, and he said, from Charlotte, North Carolina, "Sara, I have decided to help make your crazy idea.
You should help this girl do it. As I'm making the prototype, which took me a year of working on it at night, and on the weekends, I learned so much as a consumer, that it never occurred to me.
I kept talking to all these men, in the process of trying to make my product, and I remember thinking, "Where are the women? Why am I not speaking to any women here? And I learned that when you're making When the industry was making the product, that they took the same size waistband and put it on every pair. And I also learned that they were putting a tiny rubber cord inside of our waistbands. Well, I immediately said, "Guys, this is not working.
We have been miserable, we can't breathe, we're cutting our waistbands. A small woman wants a small waistband and a large woman wants a large waistband, it makes sense.
They had these plastic forms in their mill, and they would put the product up on the plastic form and they'd all stand back with their clipboards and go, "Yep, that's a medium. Sara commits to giving more than half of her wealth to charitable causes. Sara makes the cover of Inc. Hear What She has to Say. Before Forbes named her the youngest self-made female billionaire in , Blakely had plenty of failures. Then, she tried out to be Goofy at Disney World.
But she was too short. To Blakely, it felt like she'd hit "rock bottom. After her "no" from Disney, Blakely got the fax machine job, which she held for seven years. There, she faced a steady stream of rejections. Failure became about not trying, not the outcome. Without ever taking any outside investment, she went on to turn SPANX into a global powerhouse that has changed the lives of women all over the world. Through her personal foundation, Blakely has given millions of dollars to help elevate other women and in she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate half her wealth to philanthropy.
Now together with Blackstone, we will have even more opportunity to further our mission of making the world a better place… one butt at a time! This includes in just the last two years Bumble , the online dating app where women make the first move founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd; Hello Sunshine , the mission-driven media company that puts women at the center of every story it creates, founded by Reese Witherspoon; Hotwire Communications , a leading provider of cutting-edge fiber-based telecommunication services co-founded by its CEO Kristin Johnson; and GeoComply , a global leader in geolocation compliance technology, co-founded by its Chairman Anna Sainsbury.
This is in addition to female-led technology businesses in which Blackstone has invested such as Ancestry. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. The mission of the brand is to make things better and more comfortable for women.
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