How Two Friends Built a $100 Million Socks Company in Less Than 10 Years
Meet Happy Socks.
On a cold evening in April 2008, Mikael Söderlindh, an advertising executive, and Viktor Tell, a designer, were hanging out at Mikael’s house in Stockholm, Sweden.
Besides a passion for entrepreneurship, the two men shared the peculiar habit of wearing colorful socks. Viktor confessed to Mikael that he was so bored he had daydreamed about creating a company “making happy socks”.
They laughed but couldn’t stop themselves from seriously considering it. After finding out that people bought on average 10–14 pairs of socks per year, they checked if the Happy Socks domain was taken. It wasn’t.
They bought it and followed their hunch.
Rather than testing the market first, they chose to look for a manufacturer.
They emailed 100 companies and got one answer from a small factory in Turkey.
They flew to meet the owner and hit the first obstacle: he didn’t believe in colorful socks for adults. As it turned out, Mikael and Viktor had been in touch with his son, not him.
They somehow managed to convince him and in the next couple of days, learned everything there was to learn about sock making.
