Mother Of The Miracle Mop

Inventor Makes Millions Through TV Marketing

(CBS)  Sometimes innovative ideas can be found in the most ordinary places. CBS News Anchor Dan Rather reports on a woman who turned a talent for tinkering into her American Dream.

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Joy Mangano is a self-made success story. At 44, she is the president and sole product designer of a multi-million dollar company she launched in 1991. And, as she tells it, the inspiration for that success started early in her life: "As a child, I would look at something like the toaster, and I would think, 'Well gee, wouldn't it be better if it did this.' So I'd start fiddling and making changes."

Her American Dream began while mopping up after her children in her Long Island, N.Y. home. Says Mangano, that is when an idea struck her: "There was no such thing as the self-wringing mop and I designed this product from my own desire to have a clean floor and not have to get on my hands and knees any more," remembers Mangano.

According to Mangano, when she told family and friends about her plans to market and sell her "Miracle Mop" she was greeted with skepticism. "Nobody was really interested," she recalls.

But people started paying attention when Mangano went on a television retailing channel and sold 18,000 of her mops in 20 minutes. "I had the benefit of being on live TV to demonstrate that concept and it took off immediately," she says.

With the unprecedented success of the Miracle Mop, Mangano had to expand from her bedroom-run operation to a company employing 150 people. "Oh my goodness, what better dream for an inventor than to have their design or creation being manufactured."

Less than 10 years after she started, Mangano has a half dozen other best-selling inventions and has mopped up $200 million in sales. She is now a regular on the Home Shopping Network.

Mangano is proof that for some the American Dream may lie just beyond the imagination. "And when I look at myself, and where I was with three little children, struggling, and where I've been able to get to today, it's amazing to me," she says. "And I am thankful every minute for that ability - only in America."