How a Teenager Made $1 Million Selling Socks
Teenage, an age of fun, exploration, tantrums and a few bad decisions.
You might have seen teenagers shooting funny Snapchat stories or TikTok videos.
And, of course, there’s always a genius teenager in the news every once in a while — someone who’s young physically, but mature mentally.
The teenager I’m going to talk about in this article generated a million dollars in revenue by selling socks.
Brennan Agranoff was just 13 years old when he came up with a life-changing idea. Let’s discover the story of this kid who made a fortune by doing things a bit differently.
A School Basketball Game That Changed Everything
In 2013, when the young Brennan saw all the students wearing the generic, monotonous Nike socks, he felt like there needs to be a change.
Like every skilled entrepreneur, Brennan saw an opportunity — a gap in the market for printed custom socks.
Nike’s all-black or all-white socks were doing good sales. The fact that almost every kid in the basketball court was wearing them was all the market research Brennan needed.
He realized that if plain socks can do so good, socks with dozens of different designs will break the roof.
The Business Began in His Garage
It’s not very common for high-school students to have thousands of dollars in savings. Brennan was one such kid. He knew he needed an investor.
He didn’t have to go out to find investors because they were right there in the house — his own parents. Oh boy, was it easy to convince them?
His parents were a bit hesitant, initially. But Brennan was determined to launch his startup and finally persuaded his parents to lend him $3000.
And so began the journey of HoopSwagg, a company that offered eye-catching socks with unique designs printed on them.
He got some family members to help him to set up the printing and heat presser machines in the garage. Then, he sourced a bunch of white athelic socks from Dick’s Sporting Goods and began the printing process.
Marketing
Brennan didn’t have a million-dollar marketing budget like Nike, Puma, Adidas, and other big brands.
That’s why he had to rely on word-of-mouth marketing to spread the word. He also leveraged social influencers to raise awareness about his little “printed socks” experiment.
As the saying goes, “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” Sales were a bit slow during the first year. But Brennan was persistent. He didn’t come this far to turn back.
Eventually, one of the designs went viral and Brennan’s startup HoopSwagg received a whole lot of attention.
Growth
Now his family believed in him and got involved. It was finally time to get out of the garage and scale the business. So the family built a building on their property to facilitate large-scale production and distribution.
Eventually, his mom joined the company and started working full-time for Brennan’s startup. The teenager also hired more than a dozen part-time employees to distribute his massive workload.
After going to school and completing his homework, Brennan still managed to dedicate about six hours on his startup — now that’s dedication.
Clearly, the teenager understood the value of hard work, and, apparently, has an incredible work ethic.
The company offers hundreds of custom-printed socks on their eCommerce website. Each pair is priced at $14.99 and the company usually receives a substantial amount of orders daily which enables them to generate thousands of dollars in revenue on a daily basis.
Brennan claims that the internet played a huge role in his success and no matter how young someone is, the information they need to start a lucrative business is all there on the internet.
Conclusion
Innovation is what separates entrepreneurs from regular business owners. When other people saw socks as a commodity, Brennan turned them into a unique brand.
Almost all the knowledge you need is out there on the internet. Including this article, that’s giving you a million-dollar idea right now.
On a side note, HoopSwagg’s story also proves how crucial it is to have social alliances if you’re a small brand that’s just starting out.
You might need a small number of dedicated people who are willing to give you that initial push. Then, of course, investors and customers will jump in once your business gains momentum.
About This Publication
How They Made Money is a publication that’s focused on analyzing how rich individuals exactly generated their income. Feel free to follow this publication if you want to use this knowledge to reach one step closer to your own financial freedom.
