The great thing about my job is that I often get to choose my assignments, so when purveying the speaker schedule for the 5th Annual Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference, hosted by the Association for Corporate Growth-Denver chapter, I had several choices.
Let’s see, there was a breakfast presentation by 30-something, cute blonde, leggy millionaire Sara Blakely, who would be talking about how she came up with a new idea for hosiery that would make womens fannies look more shapely. And then there was well, I dont really remember what the other choices were.
Blakely gave a great talk to an overflow crowd Wednesday at the Inverness Hotel. And judging by the response from the primarily female executive audience and the cheerleading from the women in our own office, sales of Spanx panty hose and underwear will soon double the $100 million in revenues the seven-year-old company is doing now.
Blakelys story is truly one of copier-saleswoman-to-riches. The story has been told on the Oprah Winfrey show and in numerous business publications many times over, and thus it is a bit, ahem, worn, but Blakely gave the Denver audience some humorous outtakes on her rise to the top.
The Florida native sold copiers and fax machines for seven years in Atlanta, when she discovered her frustration with ill-fitting panty hose.
“The options have been girdles, and the thong, which solved nothing and put underwear back where weve been trying to get it out of,” Blakely quipped.
