Today we’d like to introduce you to John And Mark X. Cronin
Hi John And Mark X., we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
The story of John’s Crazy Socks starts in the fall of 2016. John was entering his last year of high school and, like everyone else, trying to figure out what comes next. He explored different options looking at colleges and social service programs. Mostly he was interested in working. John could not find anything that excited him. This is an unfortunate reality that there are just not enough good options for people with different abilities.
But John is a natural entrepreneur; he would take this challenge and turn it into an opportunity. If he did not see a job he wanted, he would create his own. He came to me and said, “Dad I want to go into business with you.”
He then set about to determine what that business would be. Some of his ideas were fanciful. He suggested we open a fun store though he never quite explained what a fun store was. After watching the movie Chef, which told of a father and son bonding over a food truck, John wanted to open a food truck business. This seemed like a fun idea and we were thinking about what we could make and where we would put the truck. But we ran into a problem: we can’t cook.
Right before Thanksgiving John had his Eureka moment. He came to me all excited with a bunch of papers in his hand. “We should sell crazy socks.” He already had the name and those papers contained drawings of what a website could look like.
We eschewed the traditional business plan and went to lean startup route. We would get something up and running and our customers would let us know if it was a good idea. So we built a simple website and got some inventory. The only marketing we did was to set up a Facebook page and I would take out my cell phone and we made videos with John starring in those videos. He came up with his own catch phrase: “socks, socks and more socks.” People started sharing those videos.
We opened on Friday December 9, 2016 unsure of what to expect. That first day we got 42 orders it felt like a flood. Most of those orders were local, which made sense. We lived in the town of Huntington, John attended Huntington High School, and we had temporary office space in Huntington Village.
We were committed to making our customers happy so we decided to make home deliveries for the local orders. We got red boxes and put the socks in the box. John wrote a thank you note for each customer and we got bags of Hershey’s kisses and poured them into the boxes. We loaded up the car and drove around and John knocked on doors delivering the socks. The customers loved it. They took photos with John and the socks and began to share them on social media. Word began to spread.
Over the next two weeks leading up to Christmas, we shipped 452 orders we knew we had something. We did not know how fast it would grow, we did not know how large it would grow, but we knew we could make this business work.
That was 7 1/2 years ago. We have succeeded in growing the business though there have been plenty of ups and downs. From the start we have been clear on our mission to spread happiness. John will tell you that the keys to happiness are gratitude and do for others; the more we can do for others the better off we are.
We have built the business on five pillars:
1. Inspiration and hope – showing what people with differing abilities can do
2. Giving back
3. Fun products you can love
4. Make it personal
5. Make this a great place to work
We have paid attention two our three “Ps”: people, product, and process. We have worked hard to recruit great colleagues, people with wonderful skills but more importantly people who want to share in our mission. We have worked to deliver great products to our customers. We have innovated in the design of our socks. John created the world’s first Down syndrome-themed socks. We made a superhero sock that has a cape on it. Recently, we introduced the world’s first tactile Braille socks to celebrate people with vision impairment. And we have continually improved our processes to serve our customers.
After starting out with just John and me driving around to deliver socks, we have succeeded in growing our business. Today we offer 4000 different pairs of socks, more than any other sock store, which makes John the owner of the world’s largest sock store. We may not be outselling Target and Walmart, at least not yet, but we have more choices than anybody else as we have shipped over 450,000 orders to 88 different countries. We have created 34 jobs, 22 of which are held by people with differing abilities. Our giving back program has raised over $750,000 for our charity partners like the Special Olympics the National Down Syndrome Society and the Autism Society of America. We have made our customers happy. We have over 30,000 five-star reviews and we have a Net Promoter score of 96. As John says, “We’re just getting started.”
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In any venture, it is not a question of whether things will go wrong only a matter of when. In the past 7 1/2 years we have continually sought to improve our processes, to continually learn how we can deliver more happiness, how we can do a better job of showing what people with differing abilities can do. And yes, we have encountered problems, even been on the verge of bankruptcy. The size of the problem does not matter; it is always about how we respond.
Here are some examples of that continuous improvement. When we started, our warehouse consisted of one room and some wire racks where we laid out the socks. We’ve struggled to keep track of inventory and to deliver accurate orders. We are now in our third location, each time moving to a larger warehouse with more features. The wire racks are long gone. Today, we have an address-based system where every item has an address with an aisle rack and bin location. We have added an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and improved our processes. Today, we do same-day shipping and our error rate is less than .2 of one percent. We are now starting to offer our fulfillment and assembly services to other businesses.
We have always been committed to excellent customer service but that is a journey, not an end point. Here’s an example. We put candy in every package and one day one of our Packers comes to us and says, “We sell socks for diabetics and then we are sending those people with diabetes candy, What is wrong with this picture?” Now we have a supply of sugar-free candy that goes in every package containing diabetic socks.
We told you how John and I bootstrapped this business and we were able to grow it. However, we were undercapitalized and growth is very expensive. We finished our second year, 2018, by making a profit and greatly increasing our revenues. That should have all been good news but I had to ask my accountant why I had no cash. The answer was easy: it was all tied up in inventory and infrastructure.
At the same time, we recognized the need to develop our own line of socks which meant we had to develop our own manufacturing capability.
All this made calendar year 2019 very difficult. Yet by the beginning of 2020 we had found the right strategic partner who gave us manufacturing capabilities and helped us stabilize financially.
There were some humorous moments. I told you that we opened on Friday, December 9, 2016. We were going to open at 10:00 AM but our Webmaster (who is me) made a mistake in our code and crashed our website, so we did not unveil the website until 3:00 PM that afternoon.
And we only had a limited inventory so by Saturday afternoon we were running out of socks to sell. Where could we get more socks on Saturday evening? We drove to every Kmart in Suffolk County and bought all the socks we could just so we would have some inventory to sell.
I spoke of putting Hershey’s Kisses in every package. Everyone loved it. Until we got the email from a woman in Florida who said, “you may not want to ship chocolate to the south in the hot weather.” We moved onto Skittles and now include lollipops.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
There are approximately one gazillion businesses selling socks. If all we did was sell socks, we would be lost. Yet our have socks become the physical manifestation for our story and mission; wear our socks and you will feel good just putting them on. Wear our socks and they will make you feel happy. Yes, we work hard to make beautiful socks that wear well. Which is as important as the fun and creative designs that allow people to express their personalities through our socks.
We don’t simply sell socks. We are not chasing transactions. We are building relationships by creating customer experiences. It is the joy of going through our website; it is the pleasure of receiving our package; it is a colorful package and when you get your socks, you get a thank you note from John. On the flip side of that thank you note is the story of John’s Crazy Socks. You get candy and on the packing slip you see the name and the picture of the person who packed your order. You are not just getting a pair of socks; you are getting a dose of happiness. Our customers by socks from us because the socks make them happy. Yet there is even more to it. When you buy from us you help us create jobs for people with differing abilities. You help us show the world what people with differing abilities can do. And you help us give back, starting with us donating 5% of our earnings to the Special Olympics. Most of all, you help us spread happiness.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Don’t overthink things. Don’t wait for the perfect moment because it will never come. Take action. Learn as you go. You will need to continually learn. You will fail, but fail fast and learn again. In boxing, the champion is the fighter who gets up off the canvas to keep going.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://johnscrazysocks.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnscrazysocks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnscrazysocks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnsCrazySocks
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Johnscrazysocks/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnscrazysocks
