Jocks to Socks

20 plus years ago if you had told Paul and I that we would be the owners of a sock business, we would have laughed you out of the room.  First, we both had it all figured out.  We were both in radio, the career I chose from the early age of 13, and where Paul found himself as the closest to a sound engineer gig as he could get.  Second, we were also roommates, so at night we would brainstorm on show content for my morning radio show and dream of moving on to bigger markets, bigger audiences, and of course bigger paychecks.  All the while Paul’s father pleaded with him to come join the family business of socks and forget all this showbiz nonsense.  For years Paul would fight tooth and nail to stay out of the sock business and do what he wanted to do with his life.  For me, I sent out resume after resume, aircheck after aircheck.  Came close a bunch of times, but I still found myself in a small market and also in a business that was changing every year.

Fast forward to 2010. Paul, myself, and another buddy decide to start a media company that specialized in drone video.  This was in the very beginning of drone technology.  Drones didn’t come with cameras back then.  You had to buy your own camera then attach it with a gimbal (sold separately) that you had to install yourself.  Again, big dreams no success.  People were amazed once they saw the footage, but no one wanted to pay for it.  At every failing step Paul’s father kept at him to come back to the family business of socks.  Paul would be a 3rd generation sock maker if he would only listen to his father.  Finally, Paul gave into his father’s pleas and went back into the business.

For the next 8 years Paul honed his skills in the retail sock business only to be disappointed with the carousel of buyers.  Some discontinued his brand all together even though he was outselling the competition, some took years to reach, and most were not making common sense buying decisions.  He was fed up with the brick and mortar system and set his sights on bringing a luxury brand of socks directly to the customer via e-commerce. 

When Paul approached me with the idea of an e-commerce luxury sock business, I was all ears.  I was excited about the idea of selling something tangible.  Something people could touch, feel, smell (in a non-smelly sock kinda way).  By the way, we have a sock for smelly feet.  It is treated with nano silver.  The same process used by the US Navy and Marines that is anti-microbial, anti-odor, and anti-fungal.  It’s called our Elemax series. 

For my entire career I had been selling “air” in hopes of gaining advertising dollars.  Trying to garner as many listeners as possible to not only have sold out months of radio ads but do it on the promise that it would work.  Now I could sell something to a customer, and they would get immediate satisfaction!  I was all in and thankful for the opportunity.

In the summer of 2019, we began our journey.  It’s only the beginning, but we hope everyone loves our luxury sock lines, loves the new sock lines we will be adding in the future, and helps us raise lots of money for breast cancer research to one day find a cure.  In the meantime, let’s just enjoy some nice socks and pay close attention to “What’s on Your Feet?”.