Patrick Crider is making his footprint in the men’s hosiery business with his Odd Fellow Sock Co.
Crider, 41, who has described himself as a “sockpreneur,” says, “Insurance is my day job. I started this sock business about five years ago on the side because, honestly, I was looking for some socks and I couldn’t find some I wanted. And I thought maybe I could figure out how to get them made or where to get them made.”
Owner and founder of The Insurance Shoppe of Tennessee in Collierville, Crider was searching for socks about four or five years ago to match his bowtie. “I was going to a wedding and I wanted some Tennessee Tristar socks.”
That’s the Tennessee flag logo that depicts the three regions of the state. “I had a bowtie at that time that had a Tennessee Tristar, so I wanted socks and just looked all over the place and couldn’t find them.”
So, he thought, “I’ll try to figure out how to do this on my own.”
He looked online and found companies in the United States that produce socks. But, when he told them what he wanted, “Pretty much all of them laughed at me.”
They told Crider he needed to order a minimum of 50,000 pairs. Crider responded, “I don’t know if I would be able to sell anything close to that.”
Crider had to search out of the country. “I ended up getting them sourced in China. We wanted to make sure that it was safe manufacturing. We got all these different certificates from them to make sure it was a good, honest manufacturer. Where U.S. manufacturers didn’t want to talk to me and laughed at me, the person I talked to in China was incredible. He responded quickly.”
And, he says, “They kind of bent over backwards to do it.”
The initial order was “different variations of these Tennessee Tristar socks. The first order we did, if I remember, was maybe 4,000 to 6,000 of about five or six different designs I wanted to get.”
Crider designed the socks. “I’m not a graphic designer, so I don’t know how to do it. I have designs, but don’t know how to do the technical stuff. The first round I did, what it would take a graphic designer 15 to 20 minutes to do it, would take me a week to figure it out or even longer.”
As for the physical sock itself, Crider says, “I just went and bought a bunch of different kinds. And the ones that I liked the feel, those were the ones when I was talking to the manufacturer I said, ‘I’ve got to have this. I’ve got to have that.’ So, it was just the different blends. I don’t know the percentages, but there’s got to be a certain amount of cotton, but also nylon. And they did really good at steering me in the right direction.”
Crider found people who could take his idea and “essentially put it into a template.”
Recalling the first design, Crider says, “It was a very simple design, but I just thought it was cool. And I was hoping other people would think the same thing. The original is a red sock with a navy circle with white stars in it. And then we did some that almost are school-related colors. One is a gray sock with an orange circle that could be a UT color.”
The “Beale Street” sock is “a Memphis gray sock with Memphis blue.”
Crider makes sure he gets samples of the socks from the manufacturer before they go on sale. “We try to get samples of everything because what looks good on paper or on the computer doesn’t necessarily translate to the sock.”
And, he says, “From concept to actually getting them in hand can be 90 to 120 days.”
Crider originally advertised the socks on Facebook. “It took off pretty quickly. And then we had vendors reaching out to us. Oxbeau reached out to us. And they still carry them. Alumni Hall carries them. That has eight locations that reach out to us, so that has been a great vendor.”
Odd Fellow Sock Co. now carries between 15 and 20 designs. “A lot of them are the Tennessee socks, but we’ve got Alabama socks, South Carolina ones. We got 901 socks for Memphis. We’re slowly but surely trying to expand the different things, but I’m slow with my designs.”
Crider likes the idea of designing socks for different states. “With all 50 states it would be a very strong business. But I didn’t do that.”
He would like to make “socks that support a cause” like breast cancer awareness and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “We can donate portions of those proceeds. That’s one of the big things I want to do.”
Crider is a fan of his own socks, which sell for $12 a pair. “I wear them every day. And a lot of people have told me they’re one of the most comfortable socks they’ve worn. They love them because they’re kind of dress socks.”
But they’re not like some other dress socks, he says. “Sometimes you’ll get some that stretch out at the top and fall down. But that’s not what these do. Where you put them is where they stay. They do really good at not falling down. “
It took Crider a while to come up with his sock business name. “I went through probably 100 different names and finally got so mad at myself. I was wasting time just coming up with a name. Odd Fellow was the one I landed on.”
The name “Odd Fellow” doesn’t refer to that leftover sock you find in the dryer; it refers to the guy who wears his socks. “Socks, to me, are a kind of a unique way of being different. To me, the typical black or navy blue or whatever is so boring. And this was kind of a way to stand out. That’s how I looked at it. Being odd as a good thing.”
His slogan is, “Why be boring? When you can be odd.”
A native of Trenton, Tennessee, Crider put thought into the socks he put on his feet from the time he was a teenager. “I always had weird socks, but it was almost a conservative weird sock. Maybe they were plaid or something like that. Probably until I got in the business world where I was wearing a suit or slacks everyday was when I started wearing weirder socks because it was something different. You could still be a professional and have weird socks on.
“I think I had some that were not the usual black or navy or brown sock, but it wasn’t anything I gave a lot of thought to. For some reason, as I got older I like the brighter colors. It’s just soothing to me. It just sticks out. You’re in a bland suit. This is something that helps you stick out.”
His Odd Fellow socks are still on the conservative side, but Crider says, “The stores that I talk to always tell me the weirder the better. Those are the ones that sell like crazy.”
He’s had people ask him, ‘Do you have Fortnite socks?’” and “Can you make them?”
“That video game. I never did them, but I’m sure whoever did them did really well. I think the weirder ones I have had were Star Wars or something like that.”
Sales of his socks, which are $12 a pair, vary, Crider says. “Christmas time is when it gets really busy with online orders, so I’ll hire somebody to help me during that time. When I started this, my oldest son was a baby. Now I’ve got two kids that are six and seven. So, typically, I would do my day job and I would come home, play with the kids, and when they went to bed I would work on it, doing everything from designing to packing orders and shipping them out.”
He came up with “sockpreneur” for his Linkedin account. “I just thought of it one day. I thought it was funny. I feel like here in the past 10 years everybody wants to call themselves an entrepreneur and I thought that was a funny spin on it.”
Crider has been an entrepreneur since he graduated from University of Memphis with a degree in finance. “A couple of years out of college, me and a buddy started a landscape company.”
He opened his insurance company in 2012. “I’ve either always been self employed or had my own business.”
Crider doesn’t want to branch out into any other clothing. “There’s still so much I can do with the socks. I feel like, to some degree, if I did other things right now it would take away the limited time I have to work on the socks. So, I think right now my main focus is to come up with better designs and stick with that.”
As for sock designs he’d like to make in the future, Crider says, “I think it’d be funny or cool to have Christmas Vacation socks or Elf socks, or things like that. Although the licensing part gets a little tricky, those are some of the other things I would look into. Classics. I think those already have such a strong following. People would like that.”
Crider doesn’t know how many socks he’s sold since he began, but, he says, “When I started it in my mind I thought, ‘Okay. I could sell $10,000 or $20,000 worth of socks, that would be incredible.’ And we’ve surpassed that by a lot.”
His most popular sock probably is the Tennessee Tristar gray sock with the orange circle. In addition to appealing to UT fans, the socks “also have the Tennessee state pride as well. I think those have been our best ones.”
Crider does sell a Tennessee Tristar sock for children. “And I have one that is a women’s sock that is almost like the women’s UT Vols basketball team colors. A baby blue with orange.”
He’s gotten email requests from women. “They would get the socks for their husband and wish they would have them.”
And, he says, “That’s the goal, too. We haven’t even tapped into other markets or other demographics. It’s mainly been men. That’s the thing. There’s a lot of things we can still do with socks that we haven’t tapped into.”
Ironically, Crider’s day-to-day socks aren’t seen by many people. “I almost hide my socks because I wear cowboy boots so much. But I still have them on. Every day I’m not in shorts, I’m wearing those.”
To order and view Crider’s Odd Fellow Sock Co. socks, go to oddfellowsockco.com
