We started this company five and a half years
ago. You know we had a goal of donating a
million pairs of socks.
And this year we're gonna donate our 25
millionth pair.
I'm David Heat, I'm the co-founder and CEO
of Bombas.
I'm Randy Goldberg I'm the co-founder and
Chief Brand Officer at Bombas.
David and Randy met while working at a
startup. One day, David saw a quote on
Facebook, "Socks are the number one most
requested item in homeless shelters."
A light bulb went off.
In 2013, they launched Bombas — a sock
company that donates one pair of socks for
every pair sold.
The name Bombas comes from the Latin word for
a bumblebee.
Bees are altruistic animals.
They live in a hive.
They work together to make their world a
better place.
So we took a lot of inspiration from
that and it's sort of infused in everything
that we do in our culture, in the socks that
we design, in the T-shirts that we design.
It's really everywhere in Bombas.
The team was inspired by companies like TOMS
and Warby Parker who work with a similar
model.
We didn't grow up dreaming of starting a sock
company. I'm not sure anybody ever has, but
we got obsessed with socks and we looked at
every pair of socks in the market.
We realized that what most people were
wearing just weren't that comfortable.
And there were ideas and features that we
started to notice that we could improve
upon.
We started getting hundreds and hundreds of
samples in and we'd always kind of stuff our
our gym bags with socks and we'd go to the
gym and randomly go up to people and be
like, "Hey I know this sounds really strange
but can you try a pair of our socks?" Those
same people would always come back a few
days later and be like, "You know those
socks you gave me.?
They're really really good. How
do I get some?"
The team decided to launch on Indiegogo with
a goal of $15,000 over a 30-day
period. Within the first 24 hours, we did
over $25,000 in sales and then over that
30-day period, we grossed just under
$150,000 worth of sales.
So what makes these socks so extraordinary?
It starts with really great materials —
amazing high-quality long-staple cotton,
really well made merino wool, and then from
there we, think about the toe seem, the arch
support. We have what we call a honeycomb
arch support.
It really makes like a good hug around your
mid-foot.
People love that feature.
We use a different stitching technique on
the heels so the heel cup grips your foot.
We tested tension levels in our calf socks
so they stay up and don't slide down, but
don't leave marks on your leg so it's really
about thoughtful design and a
consumer-focused approach to how we build a
product in today's world.
The socks are kind of pricey.
A 12-pack of women's ankle socks goes for
$144. And some of the socks cost $18 a pair.
Why are people willing to pay that
much? Before Starbucks you bought coffee
from Maxwell House and had it at home or
bought coffee at a corner deli for $0.75
and what they did was improved the quality
so much and improve the experience around
coffee, that they were bringing the price up
to 3x what you used to spend so if it's
$0.75 at a corner deli and it's $2.25
at Starbucks, you're willing to pay extra
for a better experience, for a better
product, and it's the same thing with our
socks.
And people love them.
They are soft and cushy.
They stay in place all day long.
The arch support helps your feet feel good
even when you're running and gunning all
day or working out.
I didn't expect to love them like I do.
It's a no-brainer for me.
I get comfy socks and then someone in need
gets super comfy socks.
The mission portion of our business has
almost driven the business part of our
business.
Besides making great socks Bombas wants to be
the best place to work.
This is a self-selecting group of people,
right? People who come and work at Bombas
want to make an impact in the communities
where we all work and live.
Bombas employees do their fair share of
giving back.
One key thing that we do as a team is that we
volunteer our time.
We're not just donating socks, we're
donating hours and we're donating parts of
our lives during the work week to go and
connect with the shelters and organizations
that we support through our sock donations.
So, we're handing out socks, we're serving
food, we're walking around on the streets,
we're meeting people who are really invested
in improving the community and we want to be
very closely connected to that so that we
understand why we're all here and why we're
doing what we do. Coming
into this organization, we had set a goal
really, really early on to be the best place
to work for any employee.
Like many startups, Bombas offers unlimited
vacation and free meals a few times a week.
They also leave the office twice a year for
a company retreat.
So what's next for Bombas?
Socks will always be the heart of what we
do, but we're releasing new products this
year starting with T-shirts which is really
exciting. In the same way that we developed
socks over two years to find and make the
most thoughtful version of a product that we
all know already, we've done the same thing
with T-shirts. So
the T-shirt is a super thoughtful product
made Peruvian Pima cotton, has a cool hand
feel, kind of like the other side of the
pillow. It's designed to feel like your
favorite T-shirt from day one.
So the first T-shirt you're gonna want to
wear out of the wash every
time. I mean, something that we say
sometimes is "It's just socks."
But when we say that, what we're really
saying is, "Well, it's just socks but look
at what socks can do."
You hand somebody a pair of
socks who's having a hard day and it starts
a conversation and that's a moment of
dignity.
And then all of a sudden you have a little
bit more compassion, a little bit more
understanding, and you help somebody out.