Hardware Podcasts

Live From The HIBT Summit: Sara Blakely Of Spanx

How I Built This · 5 Dec 2019 · 19m

What this episode covers

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, explains how she protected her idea by keeping it secret for a year to avoid discouragement, leveraging her background selling fax machines to build resilience against rejection. She details the 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' strategy, including moving products in Neiman Marcus and buying her own inventory to create social proof. Blakely also discusses the operational chaos of early fulfillment, such as sobbing in Office Depot while learning logistics, and her deliberate choice to run Spanx with kindness rather than 'war' tactics.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Neiman Marcus, Office Depot
Products
Spanx
Also
Oprah, Forbes

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