Miss Texas '78 and Sassybax Founder Gives Congrats and Advice to New Miss Texas Crowned Miss USA

April 15, 2008 - PRLog -- Amanda Horan Kennedy, born Barbara Horan and crowned Miss Texas in 1978, salutes Crystle Stewart of Missouri City, Texas, for winning this year’s Miss USA pageant on April 13.   Kennedy, who won the best state costume and second runner-up at the Miss USA competition 30 years ago, is the founder of Sassybax, maker of high-end shapewear that sells at Neiman Marcus and hundreds of other specialty stores nationwide.  

Kennedy and Stewart are both entrepreneurs and both professional models at one time.  Stewart runs a party-planning and motivational speaking company, and Kennedy was a full-time actress in the 1980s who left Hollywood after a decade of starring in her own series BJ and the Bear and regularly guest-starring on Dallas, Cheers, Remington Steele and Hart To Hart.  

The advice that company-owner Kennedy offers to the 26-year-old business woman and other entrepreneurs:
1.   Secure enough capital to stay in business for a couple of years in case it takes time to sell your idea.  Friends and family are good avenues, but have a rock-solid business plan so that you’re taken seriously by everyone you ask for funds.  The most common failure in start-up companies is not having enough funds up-front.
2.   Take every opportunity as it comes, because everyone and every meeting is a teacher.  
3.   Don't talk to manufacturers without a non-disclosure agreement.  
4.   Be first to the market with your new invention.  Patents are great, but they can be expensive and difficult to secure and enforce.
5.   Don't give up.  

Kennedy’s highly engineered shapewear twice earned kudos in The Oprah Magazine, twice created some rare friendly banter between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View, and immediately earned several pages of ink in Entrepreneur magazine in the spring of 2005.  Sassybax was the first bra line designed to eliminate the chance of bra bulge and lines across a woman’s back.  Kennedy is the company’s spokesperson, as well as its designer, inventor, and fit model.

Los Angeles-based Sassybax earned approximately $10 million in sales in 2007 from its seamless bras and patented bottom shapers.  This year, the company extends its line of back-centric bras with the introduction of Very Bare, a backless strapless adhesive bra worn by actresses Katharine McPhee and Rose McGowan and part of several A-list celebrity stylists’ wardrobe kits.  For more information about Sassybax and its products, visit www.sassybax.com.

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Los Angeles-based Sassybax makes highly engineered shapewear that twice earned kudos in The Oprah Magazine, twice created some rare friendly banter between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View, and immediately earned several pages of ink in Entrepreneur magazine in the spring of 2005.  Owned by Amanda Kennedy, Sassybax was the first bra line designed to eliminate the chance of bra bulge and lines across a woman’s back.  Kennedy is company spokesperson, designer,  and fit model.

Website: www.sassybax.com