We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.

Rachel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Pride Socks is a lifestyle brand empowering individuals to take pride in who they are.

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Rachel Smith and I am the founder of Pride Socks. I was teaching special education at the high school level and I was looking for supplemental income to make ends meet. I was serving tables and teaching and although I loved interacting with customers, I was ready for something else. I asked my brother who also owns a sock company if I could work for him on the side. After a couple years, he told me to leave him alone and do my own thing! ha ha. So I did. After putting thought into what has made a difference in my life and created the path I was on, Pride Socks was born.

I was raised in the Deaf culture by Deaf parents with 4 siblings and we were POOR! We all shared everything. Socks included. That started the initial obsession. When I was 14 I joined the cross country team and not knowing anything about running or racing strategy, I wanted to quit after the frist race. My coach talked me into staying for one more week and as I was getting on the bus, she handed me a card. It simply said “I am proud of you.”

Moving forward into my teaching career, I taught kids who had learning disabilites and were told they stupid and they believed it. So I created lesson plans that lead to success and when I could see that sense of self pride, I explained what they were feeling and why. I wanted to be my coach for them.

When I was in the process of developing the brand, I knew I would eventually quit teaching so I wanted to create something that made a difference. Hence, Pride Socks was born after I connected all the dots. We ALL have something to be proud of. We all have the desire to be seen, heard and known.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It is not just one story but understanding who I wanted to connect with and create a voice and connection to the community we built the brand around. The mission behind Pride Socks is to empower individuals to take pride in who they are so they chase and accomplish their dreams. Everyone has something to be proud of and sometimes we need to hold someones hand or use them as an anchor until we can take on that torch and run with it. We strive to be that anchor by creating products that encourage you to be seen and sharing stories of those who have overcome challenges in life and met that goal they were aiming for.

When I was coming up with the brand name people discouraged me beyond measure to NOT name the company Pride Socks. I was told they were going to see the rainbow, read the word pride and turn an eye and not buy ‘those gay’ products. Almost 14 years later and we are here and making a difference on a global scale and using that messaging for building our audience on social media

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honestly our customers have helped us build our reputation within the market.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pridesocks.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/pridesocks
• Facebook: facebook.com/pridesocks
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pridesocks/
• Youtube: youtube.com/pridesocks