“Business is war,” said Kevin O’Leary as a panelist at a CNBC Town Hall Event, “You get up in the morning and you figure out how do I kill my competitor? How do I pour boiling oil on them?” However, Spanx founder Sara Blakely–who was also on that panel–said afterward she disagreed: “I’ve done it very differently. I have not been obsessed or focused on annihilating the competition,” Blakely told Entrepreneur, “I have only been focused on my own quality. What can I offer that’s the best and give value?”
In the late 1990s, while selling fax machines door-to-door, Blakely had been forced to wear pantyhose in the hot Florida climate. She disliked the appearance of the seamed foot while wearing open-toed shoes but liked the way that the control-top made her body appear firmer. According to CEO Today, “She took a pair of scissors and cut the feet off a pair of tights. She loved the way the new undergarment made her look.” From this first prototype Blakely built Spanx, eventually becoming a billionaire.
Blakely’s experience revealed to her that the hosiery manufacturing industry was overseen solely by men who were not using the products they were producing. As a result, she has built a tribe that is 80% female.
“At Spanx, new employees go through a training boot camp, and one of the mandatory activities is doing standup comedy. Blakely does this because it helps employees let go of their fears, loosen up, and use humor when selling Spanx products,” wrote Blaire Briody in Stanford Graduate School of Business Magazine. “She even schedules ‘oops meetings’ at Spanx where employees stand up and say how they messed up or a mistake they made, usually turning it into a funny story. ‘If you can create a culture where [your employees] are not terrified to fail or make a mistake, then they’re going to be highly productive and more innovative.’”
Blakely “grew her undergarment empire without any outside investment, debt, or even a cent spent on traditional advertising… The power of women discovering the brand from other women was actually a better strategy. ‘The aunt telling her niece; one woman to a college friend,’” she told Forbes. “We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time.”
