When Sara Blakely was growing up in Florida, she didn't exactly dream of designing ladies undergarments. She actually wanted to be a lawyer. But when she took her LSATs, she failed twice. So after college, she got a job at Disney World as a ride reader. And then, in the early '90s, she got another job. It was selling fax machines door to door.
The idea for Spanx came about in 1998, when Blakely wanted to eliminate panty lines showing through her cream-colored slacks. She cut the feet off a pair of pantyhose and wore the cropped hose underneath her pants to smooth out the lines.
She set aside $5,000 in savings, and that's what she started Spanx with. She started researching if the idea existed at Georgia Tech library in Atlanta every night after work researching every pantyhose patent that ever existed. She then went to Neiman Marcus down the street where her idea was validated and she found a market demand for the product.