How these 5 Socks Startups are making Socks More than an Accessory

The Indian Socks market while being extremely fragmented in terms of number of Manufacturers/Suppliers, is still at a very nascent stage. As per the industry data, the socks market in India is estimated to be valued at 900 to 1000 crores. Whilst the size of the market is fairly small, the growth potential is enormous.

Almost all major players in the industry are offshoots of socks exporters, and hence the priority for them has always been export. Only in the last few years, has everyone upped the ante and is looking at the indian market more seriously. While the unorganised sector dominates the market, the leading players in the organised sector are Bonjour, Mustang and Balenzia.

While innovation has in many ways tweaked our clothes, our shoes, our watches, our ankle hugging friends have remained neglected. While back, choices used to scanty in this space, and was not proportional to changing habits of new age consumers. This scarcity led to the birth of many sock-preneur who are vouched to bring socks revolution.

More and more start-ups are coming up to sell socks made with high quality material and many innovative features which are really cool and fun, and can be treated as gifting item as well. If you're looking to revamp your sock drawer beyond another cheap 6-pack at the store, these startups will serve you well.

Check out the best startup companies making cool socks:

Bombay Socks

Cofounded by Cyrus Dastur, and one close friend of him, Bombay Socks is a rapidly growing start-up. Highlighting the journey Dastur informed, “I have always wanted to disrupt the accessories market and after about 3-4 months of research and 3 years in a dead-end job, it just came to me. I had about 2-3 ideas for various accessory products but choose to start of with socks given the market scenario and growth possibilities.

Sharing the experience so far, he said, “It just seemed like the right time to jump into socks.. Literally! It's been a year and a half since we launched and it's going great! Our customers love us and the product.”

According to him, marketing and logistics were few initial hiccups which were tough to settle. “Though we've ironed, but socks wrinkles out pretty soon. We've been bootstraping our company all along. Putting in our own money as and when required since we decided not to approach VC's and keep it simple. Have more control. More money would definitely help but we've managed just fine with limited budgets and creative minds,” he informed.

Soxytoes

Aayush Goenka started socks start-up with a vision to make socks noticeable. With 20 years of experience in the socks industry he used to manufacture for leading brands such as Hush Puppy. The venture was later joined by Vidushi Kanoria and Co founder; currently she heads the Design and Marketing for Soxytoes

Highlighting the inception and journey so far, Vidushi Kanoria, Co-founder, Soxytoes informed, “From the beginning, the idea was to disrupt this previously sober and perhaps boring category. We started talking about socks 2.0. Better quality, eye popping designs injected with a lot of new tricks up our sleeves. That’s what we are promising to deliver.”

Talking about initial hiccups Kanoria informed,” Since, we are a small and fragmented team sitting at different places; hence, remote login was really a challenge for us. Also, getting the website in place was really a challenge because don’t come to buy specialized items online.”

After setting up the website, the company forayed into offline space via kiosk model. Presently, the company run two kiosks at premium malls in India. The company also retail via market places. And, averagely the company retails around 500-600 units on daily basis. This bootstrap start-up aims to explore brand licensing as the part of growth strategy.

The Moja Club

Started by Joey Saha, founded in 2016, The Moja Club is a sock subscription company based in Mumbai. Saha was inspired by subscription services he used when studying in the UK. He was fascinated by the idea of how these boxes make life easy.

The Moja Club’s designs are all crowd-sourced, and feature works from designers across the world, such as Belgium and South Africa; they don’t have Indian designers on board as yet. Their subscription plans includes pay monthly or pay up front for three months, six months or a year, starting at Rs 299 and goes up to Rs399 per month. 

SocksBakery 

Chandigarh based Socksbakery is direct-to-consumer socks brand for men. The startup is Co founded by ML Jethi who spent more than three decades working as banker. After taking an early retirement, all he wanted was to focus on his dream of owning a business.  He had spent 11 years in building in his apparels business. During all these years he learnt everything from scratch - material procurement, manufacturing process, quality control and vendor relationships.
In June 2018, he started a new venture with three co-founders. “We named it SocksBakery - a premium fashion brand for men. My vision is to build a billion dollar business in my lifetime. I am using my 11 years of experience and relationships in apparel industry to make best quality apparels at lowest prices at Socksbakery, “ he informed.
Socks can be ordered on the startup’s website, WhatsApp number, or Instagram page. A pair of regular socks is priced at Rs 299; the gift boxes go up to Rs 10,000. 

Sock Republic 

Started in 2017 Sock Republic is emerging as niche name in this segment. Highlighting the journey Ankur Jain, Founder, Sock Republic said, " I am a keen observer of the niche market, and what's better than the immense "Innerwear" industry.  I have always been fond of printed socks, that could go equally well with my jeans and my formal attire but I couldn't find more than a few colored stripes, or dots. I was really bored of those pack of 3's & 5's and I knew there is a huge fashion gap in the Indian socks market when I looked at some of the international brands like "Happy Socks" & "Stance". By late 2017, I was determined to offer the coolest socks in India!