machines. i didn t really like fax machines or half the time understand them. but if i could come up with the idea i would excited about, i would not waste it. so you ve got the idea. you ve got, you ve done some research. now you ve got to get somebody to make the prototype. how do you do that. so after i cut the feet out of my pantihose, i went, i did two things right away. when you have an idea, the first thing i did was go to uspto.gov, the united states patent and trademark office website. i searched if there was a footless body-shaping pantihose in existence. can you search that? yes, you can. you can look for patents. i found ha there wasn t one and the other thingdy was went it a website called thomasregister.com which lists the manufacturers in the united states by product. so i typed in shapers and undergarment and i got my list of manufacturers and i started calling them on the phone. cold call. cold calling them. which i was pretty good at
her from bombing the l-sats twice and she was selling fax machines door to door for seven years, that made blakely immune to rejection, which was unavailable when she started cold-calling hosiery millses with her footless pantihose ideas. she was developing spanx after hours she didn t quit her job until she invented the product, wrote the patent, started the website and landed neiman-marcus and saks fifth avenue for customers. here s more of my conversation with billionaire entrepreneur, sarah blakely. you were telling us about how you finally got the prototype and the patent. there was one little detail i know from talking to you that you didn t mention when you got the patent. the night before, the patent is going to be filed, you get nervous, because the guy who made the prototype explained what it was made of. tell that story. so my lawyer suggested we get
in a three-way call with the man in the back of the manufacturing plant that had really help immediate make my first prototype. and he was extremely southern. and we got on the conference call. and i said ted, you need to explain to sam what s in this product. so he says, well, it s 70% nylon, and 30% lacquer. and so my attorney and i were taking notes and say okay, got it, thanks. and the night before i m submitting this to the u.s. patent and trademark office i could not sleep. i m thinking, how is there lacquer in this product, in this shaper. so i called ted the next morning, and i said ted, this is sarah, can you please spell lacquer? and he said yeah, l-y-c-r-a. and i said, oh, my god, lycra!