An American housewife’s bright idea spawned a shopping revolution – and an Oscar-nominated film. Here, we look at the story behind Joy

WHEN Jennifer Lawrence bagged her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination this year, it was for a film about as far removed from her starring roles in The Hunger Games and X-Men as it is possible to get.

Joy is the odd, heart-warming, funny tale of a single mother who becomes a multimillionaire businesswoman thanks to her invention of a revolutionary new kind of mop.

While mop technology might not seem the sexiest subject for an A-list movie star, the real story behind the film is extraordinary.

In 1990, Joy Mangano was a 30-year-old struggling mum of three.

After growing up in New York, she graduated from Pace University – where she met husband Tony Miranne – with a degree in business administration.

But after a decade, their marriage had broken down, her career was going nowhere, and she was having to take on
a series of dead-end jobs to support her children.

And yet she was brimming with ideas.

Chief among them was the Miracle Mop – a mop that would be self-wringing, with a head made from a continuous 300ft loop of cotton.

It took two years, but finally, using the last of her savings plus money loaned from friends, she scraped together enough to manufacture 1,000 units and pitched the idea to home-shopping channel QVC.

The TV station took all 1,000 mops, but despite featuring it on prime-time slots, it didn’t sell.

And that’s when the real miracle happened.

Mangano persuaded the station executives to give the mop one more chance – with her presenting it.

And if there were any units left over afterwards, she promised to buy them back.

“As far as I was concerned, QVC wasn’t demonstrating it properly,” she later explained. “They were showing stills of the mop and they really didn’t know the product… I was saying to myself: ‘I know they’re wrong. This is a great product.’ I knew it would sell if I demonstrated it.” 

QVC gave her 20 minutes.

They were to be the 20 minutes that changed her life.

Mangano’s appearance was a sensation.

Funny, charming, persuasive and normal, she struck a chord with the housewives of America.

Viewers not only liked her, they identified with her, and when she told them her mop could work miracles, they believed her.

“The QVC phone lines went crazy with thousands and thousands of calls,” she said. “People couldn’t order the Miracle Mop fast enough. We sold 18,000 mops in 20 minutes. My company had to work 24 hours a day to keep up with demand.”

Within a decade, Mangano’s company was shifting more than £7.6million worth of Miracle Mops every year.

And that was just the start.

Other inventions followed.

Her range of Huggable Hangers (an ultra-thin, no-slip clothes hanger) were endorsed by Oprah Winfrey and have sold over 700 million to date.

The Forever Fragrant range of air-fresheners sold 180,000 units in a single day, and in May 2010, Mangano shifted 30,000 pairs of Performance Platforms (trainers with a hidden rubber heel to give the wearer an extra inch or two in height) in a single three-hour slot on the Home Shopping Network (HSN).

From that first 20-minute sale-or-bust slot back in 1992, Mangano is now recognised as the home-shopping channel’s most successful presenter.

When she endorses a product on HSN, sales regularly top £760,000 an hour – with an annual sales turnover of more than £115million.

All that, and she gets to be played by Jennifer Lawrence in a Hollywood movie.
Still think mops aren’t sexy?

Try telling that to Joy Mangano.