Recently, I came across an amazing and mindblowing movie: ‘Joy’, which is inspired on the real-life story of Joy Mangano. I would like to share the story and take-aways from the movie (Spoiler Alert!).
Joy
Joy Mangano was born in 1956, in New York. Her father was running a metal garage and mother was a housewife. From a very young age, she started making innovative things. While working at an animal hospital as a teenager, Mangano devised a fluorescent flea collar for cats and dogs to make them easily visible to cars at night (A company put a similar product on the market the following year). She graduated from Pace University with a degree in business administration in 1978.
Life was a mess
However, all these good things were suppressed by the efforts she had to take and sacrifices she had to make for her family. After graduating from pace university, she had to work as a waitress to support her family, which now consisted of her mother, father, grandmother, husband, and three kids. Her mother and father had constant problems with their relationship and eventually, she got divorced too.
The idea
She was a maker, and was meant to do better things than what she was doing. She knew that she was not going to give up and this is when a life changing event happened. She was invited on her step-mom’s sailboat for a party, where while drinking wine, some glasses fell on the ground. While cleaning the mess with her mop, she tried to rinse the mop, only to find glass shards in her hands. While suffering through the pain, she thought about an innovative idea that can remove this pain for all the people who go through the same horrendous and arduous process of rinsing the mop. She designed a mop that self rinses and which can be cleaned in a washing machine.
Ideas are worth nothing until implemented
Even though the idea was disruptive it did not became an overnight success. She had to first make a prototype, which she made by several iterations in her father’s garage. Later she came to know from her father’s lawyer about a company that had a patent for the product and so had to pay a royalty for that. The company itself was manufacturing the product for her and so she had to pay them for manufacturing as well. Moreover, they kept on increasing the price of manufacturing from time to time and all these troubles landed her in a debt of about 100000$.
Tried to sell on her own – Failed
First she tried to sell on her own by approaching shops to keep her product in their shop. But the shop owners claimed that they don’t want people to buy a costlier mop just once and use it multiple times, rather they want people to come back and buy a cheaper mop many times. After this failure she tried to sell the mop on her own. So she packed her mop, a bucket, a piece of her kitchen floor and her children, and she set out to show people what a mop “could” be. She spoke with anyone who would listen. But still couldn’t manage a good number of sales.
New Opportunity
Then she came to know about an opportunity to sell her product on QVC, a famous on TV product selling company, from her ex-husband. He also set her up with a meeting with QVC where she pitched and got accepted to be sold as a product on the channel. QVC asked her to make 50,000 products for her show. Again, she had to take a second mortgage on her house to fulfill the production demands.
First attempt – Failed
QVC choose a reputed salesperson to sell her product. But due to difficulties in operating the product live on show, she could not make great sales. Joy was broken, and was forced to declare bankruptcy by her family members. However, she was not going to accept defeat so soon.
Second attempt – Record breaking sales
Joy went back to QVC to get a second chance to prove herself. And she successfully convinced the QVC team that she is the one who should be on screen to demonstrate that product. The moment was here: ‘Household product 375… 3 … 2…. 1… Action!’, all the lights and cameras were on Joy. She gave a splendid performance by letting people know that their was a need for the mop and sold 18,000 mops in less than a half hour. This was the moment that made Joy Mangano what she is today.
And now
All this was just the beginning, for both the Miracle Mop and Mangano’s success. In 1999 Mangano sold her company, Ingenious Designs, to the parent company of the Home Shopping Network (HSN), and she stayed on as the company’s president. By the year 2000, her company was selling $10 million worth of Miracle Mops per year. She has since sold millions of Miracle Mops and has created scores of other products, such as Rolykit, Huggable Hangers and the Piatto Bakery Box and also owns more than 100 patents.
There were many people who tried to pull her down and few who tried to support her. However the things that kept her going was her determination and her belief in the product. It was not that she got success in her first attempt, but her persistent attempts made her successful. If someone asks me the definition of hustler, my response would be undoubtedly “Joy Mangano”.
Source: http://joymangano.com
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