Sara Blakely trusted her intuition as she bootstrapped Spanx to a billion-dollar exit. Will the same strategy work for her sneaker-heels Sneex?

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Michelle Obama electrifies the DNC, Alex Cooper takes Call Her Daddy to SiriusXM, and Spanx founder Sara Blakely debuts a new kind of shoe, the Sneex. Have a fantastic Wednesday!

- On a high. Who doesn't want high-heeled shoes to be more comfortable? Spanx founder Sara Blakely knows women's pain, and she's trying to solve the centuries-old problem with the launch of Sneex, her new line of hybrid sneaker-heels, this week.

Sneex is Blakely's first new brand since starting Spanx two decades ago. Spanx made Blakely a billionaire by creating a category that has spawned imitators like Kim Kardashian's Skims . She seems to be hoping for similar success with Sneex. So far, it's unclear if Sneex will catch on in the same way as Spanx.

Like Spanx, Sneex are intended to be functional. The design aims to solve three major problems: squeezed toes, a gap between the arch and the base of the shoe, and unbalanced weight distribution, she said on CBS Mornings yesterday. But unlike Spanx, Sneex are outerwear so style matters, and some initial reviews of the Velcro-clad, sporty heels have been harsh .

People really care what their shoes look like. And stiletto-wearers may balk at sacrificing their fashion sense for a more comfortable $395-$595 heel that looks like a sneaker.

The thing to understand about Blakely, though, is that she thinks of herself first and foremost as an inventor, not a founder. When I profiled her for Fortune in 2021, those were the terms in which she described herself. The Spanx origin story isn't about building a business from scratch, but inventing a product that hadn't existed before. (To be clear, other brands have introduced heel-sneaker crossovers in the past .) Blakely likes solving problems and getting in the weeds; for Spanx that meant writing her patent herself rather than hiring a lawyer. For Sneex, it was trying multiple manufacturers and factories over the course of a decade. She couldn't believe that male factory owners in Italy and Spain had never tried on the shoes they make, she said yesterday.

Blakely heard so many nos as she bootstrapped Spanx that it's not easy to deter her from something she believes in. She says she can't wear heels anymore, and painful pumps are a shared frustration she's determined to solve. Plus, she relies most on her own intuition, she told me in 2021. As Blakely said yesterday: "I'd rather be an innovator than an imitator."

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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