The Mother of Reinvention

Everything is perfectly in place for Joy Mangano's second act with CleanBoss, including her partnership with co-founder Pitbull.

- AS TOLD TO CHLOE AIELLO

Joy Mangano has always had star appeal.

A chance appearance on QVC in 1992 led the then 36-year-old single mom and aspiring inventor to sell 18,000 self-wringing Miracle Mops in just 20 minutes. Mangano and her company, Ingenious Designs, would go on to launch other products, like Huggable Hangers and My Little Steamers, with similar fanfare. The entrepreneur’s status as a hitmaker was sealed with the 1999 sale of Ingenious to USA Networks, then the parent company of HSN, for an undisclosed sum. Her inspiring life was turned into a movie in 2015, directed by David O. Russell and starring Jennifer Lawrence as Mangano. The title of the film didn’t stray far from its magnetic subject: Joy.

In 2020, Mangano launched CleanBoss, and announced rapper Pitbull as a co-founder in 2023; he is one of the largest investors in the company, alongside Mangano and Irving Place Capital's John D. Howard. This year, their nontoxic cleaning supplies company hit No. 1,732 on the Inc. 5000, having grown revenue 253 percent in the previous three years. As she steers her second fast-growth company, Mangano, now 69, continues to rely on the original instincts that led to breakout success.

1 Look at life as a product.