Spreading Happiness Through Socks: A Social Enterprise That Scales with Heart Guests

In this episode of The Footwear Retailer Podcast, Pete Mohr sits down with John and Mark Cronin, the father-son team behind John’s Crazy Socks. What started as a mission to find employment turned into a 4,000-SKU business, a national brand, and a movement for inclusion and joy.

They get real about what happens when viral success overwhelms your operations, how they rebuilt from the chaos, and why giving back is baked into their bottom line.

If you’re a footwear retailer, impact-focused entrepreneur, or a business owner who believes values matter, this episode is a must-listen.

What You'll Learn:

→ How they scaled fulfillment from 40 to 1,000+ orders/day
→ Why giving back upfront became core to their growth
→ How they grew a B2B and wholesale arm
→ What they’re building next with Abilities Rising

Guest Info:
Website: https://johnscrazysocks.com
Speaking/Consulting: https://johnandmarkcronin.com
Social: @JohnsCrazySocks

Connect with Pete Mohr:
Website: simplifyingentrepreneurship.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/petemohr
Podcast: thefootwearretailer.com

Running your business shouldn’t mean running yourself into the ground.

The 10 Laws for Moving from Operator to Owner is a free downloadable guide to help you systemize your operations, empower your team, and actually enjoy the business you’ve worked so hard to build.

Grab your free copy now at simplifyingentrepreneurship.com/laws.
The shift starts here.

PLUS: Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you move from the Operator’s seat to the Owner’s seat in your business:

1. Take the Value Builder Assessment to better understand the areas of your business that add the most value to your business - Click Here

2. Uncover your Kolbe. Whether just for you, or for your full team, better understand leadership strengths and ways you can advance your People - Click Here.

3. Listen my other podcast Business Owner Breakthrough podcast as well for quick tools and tips - Click Here

Transcript

0:00

John and Mark, it's so great to have you here on the footwear retailer podcast. It's great to see your smiling faces again. Bob, Pete, thank you so much. I'm really excited. I want your podcast. We're really happy to be here. Thank you for inviting us on. Absolutely. You know, we met, I was, we were just sort of before we hopped on live. We met about four years ago as I had. You had guests on one of my other podcasts now called the Business Owner Breakthrough. And I said, when we fired up the footwear retailer, I said, you know, I gotta get these two guys on again. They're, you know, know, doing good things in the, in the world they're creating. And of course, most footwear retailers are selling socks, so there's definitely some lineage there. We're going to talk a little bit about what you guys do in your community, how you've grown this business, all of the great things that you've done since inception here for John's Crazy Socks. And we'll actually talk some business too, getting into sort of how you arrange stuff, what you've done, some of the wins and some of the losses of running a sock company and. And then we'll wrap it up with some other good news and good stories. So really super pumped to have you here. Why don't you start off from those that didn't hear that earlier, one from four years ago, as most of these people probably haven't. And tell us a little bit about what the heck is John's Crazy Socks and where did this name come from? And what do you guys do? Why don't you introduce us, pal? Dick. Dad. My name is John. This is my dad, Mark. And we are John Griffin. What's our mission? Happiness. Spread in happiness. Right. We're a slightly different type of business model. You have more of this in Canada than we do in the us. We're a social enterprise. So we are a for profit business or certainly aspire to be a for profit business. But we also have a social mission like a charity month. And that social mission is really driven on showing what people with different abilities can do. Is that what we are? Yeah, we are. Yeah. Yeah. Dad, do you want to tell them how we got started? Oh, yeah. Once upon a time. Once upon a time. That's how a lot of stories start. Once upon a time. You were in high school. Yes, I was. It was going to be your last year of school. Yes. This was the fall of 2016. And you were like everybody else trying to figure out what comes Next. And what'd you look at? I like a job program and school. I can't find. Couldn'T find anything like, you know, for your audience out there. John here is an entrepreneur. You're a dancer, a speaker, a lot of things. But you also have down syndrome. Yes I am. And so John's looking for work. And this is true in the us, it's true in Canada. Unfortunately it's true in most of the world. There just aren't enough opportunities for people with different abilities. Only one in five people with a disability are employed in this country. It's awful. But Pete, this is why we were on that entrepreneur show. John here. Yes, you are a natural entrepreneur. Yes I am. You couldn't find a job. What do you say? I said I want, I want to make one. I told my dad I want to go bank with him. I'm nice. Father and son bin together. There you go. Yes. We'll rub some sticks together, create a business. So after a couple of non starter ideas. Right, like a food truck. Yes. What was the problem with the food truck? Oh, we can't cook. Yeah, we can't cook. John is the one who suggested we sell socks. And you had the idea of selling online. Yes, I did. You came up with the name? Oh yeah, I got my name as well. Website. Well and notice Pete, whose name is in the title. Of course. Yeah. Hi dad. My child. I tried suggesting like Mark's Mary socks. Yeah. He said no. So we opened in December of 2016 to test the idea. We built a website, got a little bit of inventory. The only marketing we did was to set up a Facebook page and we made videos. And who do you think was in those videos? I am, I talk about socks. Sock, sock, more socks. It tested well. So we knew we had something. In two weeks we shipped 452 orders. We knew we had something. We didn't know how fast it would grow, we didn't know how big it would grow, but we knew we could make a business of it. And that's how we got started. And we have ridden the roller coaster ever since. Being in business isn't easy, is it? No. You know, every year we have an open house anniversary party. We throw open our warehouse. We had hundreds of people to come in. It's great fun. And as past December we celebrate our eighth anniversary. And one gentleman was talking to me and he said, well you know, getting started, that was the hard part. But ever since then all you do is cruise. I just patted him on the back, I said obviously you have never run a business. We are entitled to nothing. And every day we have to keep earning it. You know, whether you're selling shoes, whether you're selling socks, it's the same thing. We're business owners, right? And we need to go out there and earn our dollars. And it's never easy, but it's always. You're always looking for that next path and journey. And I know some of those social clips that when you guys started off were just. Just hit it, right? You hit viral moments, and you really hit some big things and trying to keep up with the demand at that time. And I know you. You hired fast, you know, when we last and had a whole crew in there and keeping up with all of that sort of stuff. But keeping up that viral interest is not that easy either, right? Because there comes a time where it's not absolutely the thing that's new and great. Now it's. Now it's about sustainability and rolling it through, right? And we experienced that. So in 2017, we rode a rocky roller coaster in the spring. That was our first year in the spring, we had our first viral moment. And I know you're out in that audience and you're telling your marketing people, I want to go viral. Watch what you ask for. You may get it. You know, we went from doing 40 orders a day to over a thousand orders a day. It almost put us out of business. And I know this is true for shoe retailers. It's definitely true for us. We then hit the summer, and nobody buys socks in the summer. It was awful. Then we hit the pole, and we had one television, national television appearance. Everything explodes again. And then in 2018, we had viral moments, we had TV moments. It was extraordinary. What we weren't, we recognized but not enough was how much of an aberration that was. Was. So 2019, we come back down to earth. Now, if you look from 17 to 19, that would have been great. But if you look from 18 to 19, that was a big drop. And you could be really smart. You can know things, but you got to keep learning. It took us a couple. Like right now, we are very good. We do our own fulfillment. We are very good at that. We have a great workforce. We have great processes. We were not born that way. It took time to get there. Talk a little bit about that journey, John, about your processes and all of the different things that you know from where you were starting this new sock company to going from 40 orders to a thousand orders, all of that, and now you're firm in it. And got it laid out. But how did that happen? And what were some of the hiccups that you guys. Because a process is a process. We got to go through it, right? Well, yes. And you have to figure that out, and it's going to match with your people and your infrastructure. So when we saw it was just the two of us, we were in this old house that had been converted to office space built in 1741. Wow. Just, you know, they say they don't build it like they used to be grateful. We had undulating floors. If you get up from your chair, it would roll away. Our warehouse was the upstairs. Low ceilings, tilted stairways. It was crazy. When we had that explosion, we had a scramble for staff. We had a scramble for inventory. We were getting truckloads. I pulled up one day and there was a pallet dropped in our driveway. Well, we didn't have a loading dock. We didn't have space even to put stuff. I remember going one night to a Best Buy to buy two more computers so we could have workstations. And I recruited two of their employees to come work for us the next day. You know, we had jumped. The end of that year, we had an appearance on Fox and friends. We got 3,300 orders that morning. Wow. One of the things I wound up doing was working with the temp agency. Now that Dante, if he comes back and rewrites the Inferno, that's a circle of hell. We. We built our store on Shopify, so we were using Shopify to manage our inventory. And you can't really do that at a high volume. Yeah. At one point, we brought UPS in to do some consulting work to help us set up our warehouse. Ultimately, we added an ERP that came with a strategic partner. We figured out our workforce, we figured out the processes, but that takes time, willingness to admit you've got mistakes. An emphasis on building your processes, not just solving today's problem. It's a process. You know, a lot of the people that. In footwear, I mean, we. I'll just use our example. At Utopia, we do a lot of charitable work, but one of our main ones is with our local food bank. And we bring in shoes, we clean them up, we fix them up, you know, put new laces, new insoles, whatever the case is, we solicit those from our existing customers who may not be using them anymore, whatever the case is. And we've aligned with our local food food bank and now have donated over 3,000 pair. Between what we have donated from the store and our customers have Donated to give back to our local community right in. And they stay where in our community. They don't get sold. They just get given to people that need them. And I know such a big piece of what you've done over the years, and you've given back hundreds of thousands of dollars to local charities. And a lot of the people listening here with footwear stores in their local communities have their own sort of individual charities. Tell us a little bit about your give back and the social side of your business. Well, I think you got to pull back and start with, you know, what's your. Why. Why are you doing this? And I would suggest that every organization has to have a mission, has to have a purpose. Not what you do, but why you do it. And that should drive everything you do. So we don't think it's enough to just sell stuff. You got to give back. But that giving back has to make sense with our mission. So what's our mission? Spread happiness. And we do that by showing what people with different abilities can do. So one thing, and we did this from day one, a traditional model is okay. At the end of the year, let me see how much money I have, and then I'll decide who I'm going to write a donation check to. We do it up front. We make a promise up front overall. So we start by pledging 5% of our profits to the Special Olympics. But then we have a whole series of products that are tied to charity partners because that invites our customers to join the community and be part of this. That they know when they buy from us, they're supporting the Special Olympics. They know if they buy our down syndrome theme socks, they're supporting the National Down Syndrome Society. So that becomes part of the customer experience. It's a good thing to do. And it's also good business because now you're building that community. You're building a sense of loyalty. And when you work with charity partners, you get them to introduce you to their supporters. But you can't just do it by writing a check. You have to find other ways to support and engage and get involved. And for us, it's people with different abilities, but for somebody else, it might be the environment or it might be food or education, but it's got to run through everything you do. I love it. And I think that's one of the things we've been purposeful about at our shoe stores. And I encourage other listeners here. If you haven't sort of done some of this work, think about what John and Mark do. And how they've aligned that as part of their everyday strategy as far as helping the community that they care and want to help. And I really think it's a big piece of growing a better business. And, you know, it does cost some money and you're doing things for a purpose. And the money often is repaid multiple times over from the clients because they see this association and they're like, wow, they're doing good work. I want to, I want to give my money to these people. Yes. Listen, if you sell the cheapest product, you will always have a customer. Yeah, that's a very hard place to be. It is. Increasingly, customers are saying, before I give you my money, what are you going to do with it? Who are you? How do you treat your customers? How do you treat your employees, your community? You know, there was a famous line in the 1960s, Milton Friedman said companies have one obligation and that's to their shareholders. I want to suggest that's where things started going really wrong, that businesses, we have an obligation to all of our stakeholders, yes, to our shareholders, to our own customers, but to our employees, to our customers, to our suppliers, to the community, to the environment. And you have to kind of nurture all of those. And then you find endless ways of doing it and you have to keep sharing it. So, you know, here's some simple things. We publish a monthly giving back report. Our customers are giving us money. So you go to our blog and every month there's a report of exactly how much money we gave and who it went to. I love it. John makes routine, you know, it's fun. I'm going to date myself a little bit here. Ed McMahon used to run around with a big check. John runs around with a big check because we send out quarterly checks or donations to our charity partners presenting those payments. And that's to show our customers here, this is what you've done. This is what we are doing together. And it creates, it feeds into the brand, it feeds into who we are. It creates a greater bond with our customers. So it becomes a habit of being. It's a wonderful. I mean, it's a wonderful story. And I think everybody needs to think about, and I'm asking you, the listener here right now, how can you be involved in something like this? And if you are involved, and I think many of you are, how can you make it even better? And I think these are the things that really add to legacy as well too, John. You know, I mean, as far as your brand legacy and a lot of this other stuff it's just, it's really interesting to think, and I love the story. One of the things I wanted to ask John. John, you've created a lot of socks. I do. What is your favorite sock you've ever created? Oh, my favorite pair of socks is a Down superhero socks. Those socks I created to wear it. And I really could be a picture of me as superhero. The belt is the cape. Right. We made special socks. You know, you. You get to experiment in footwear, we get to experiment with socks. So your down syndrome superhero socks have a cape on them. That's my favorite. I love it. And, you know, back on that, giving back. So what do those do? Well, they celebrate people with down syndrome. So people buy it to wear or that, you know, because I got a family member, a friend, a colleague, and I'm celebrating them. And then 10% of that sale goes to the National Down Syndrome Society. So everything gets wrapped up there. How many different styles of socks have you created over the last eight or nine years? All the socks we have right now is 4,000 different kinds of socks by choice, which means I own the World War stock socks. We're not out selling Walmart, Andrew. At least not yet. But. And we started. We were only making our own. We were only selling other people's socks. Yeah. And actually, I mean, here's a good story of John as an entrepreneur. Yeah. It's January of 2017. Yes. We are learning that people don't buy much in January because they spent all their money at the holidays. And we're trying to figure out what can we do to drive up sales. And that's when we discover that people wear crazy socks to celebrate World Down Syndrome Day. And when's that day? Oh, yeah, March 21st. I celebrate a world end zone Day. So you would have thought we knew that ahead of time, but we knew that. So we went looking for somebody who made a Down syndrome theme song. Nobody in this entire planet did that but my partner here. What'd you say? I said, I want clean one, I want to make one. And I started a very first downtown winter socks. He designed the very first one. And then we called up two places. We called up the National Down Syndrome Society and said, look, we're going to sell these socks, and for every pair we sell, we're going to give you some money. And they said, oh, who are you? Who are you? Who is this? John is now on the board of the National Down Syndrome Society. So. Great. It's good stuff, right? Good stuff? Yeah, it's great stuff. Tell us a little bit about the journey of that you've had since, you know, since COVID And Covid changed a lot of people a lot of things. And we hopped on that first call. Maybe I think it was 2021. But what's happened since 2021 till now? Where's your journey taken you and where are you at with the business and with the advancements that you've made? Well, a lot of good things and some not so good things. So, you know, I'll put it in some context. We told you we bootstrapped. We started. So in our first two full years, we went gangbusters. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Lots of growth, lots of revenue. We made a profit. And I'm sitting there talking to my accountant saying, how come I have no money? And you know, you know the answers because it's all in the inventory and the infrastructure. When things slowed down in 2019, the lack of capital made things really hard on us. We almost went out of business. You know, there's humor in everything. Yeah. Met with a bankruptcy law firm that said, yeah, we can do this for you. All you have to do is give us $25,000 up front. Guys, if I got$25,000, I'm not talking to you. In the beginning of 2020, he struck a deal with a strategic partner. Third generation family business, 10 times our size, that makes socks for department stores and brand names. It looked like a match made in heaven. They're good people. We shared similar values and it looked like a good fit. We sold direct to consumer. They could get us in wholesale. Well, best laid plans of mice and it never quite worked out. There was a misfit. They deal in discount brands. They deal in, you know, that that's their end of the market. We're not a discount brand. Yeah. We're a wholesale brand. So I mean, we're a premium brand. So our wholesale really went nowhere. And today it's nowhere. We're rearranging that relationship of pulling it in. We are looking for a new investor to help us grow. But we sell in three channels, direct to consumer through our, mainly through our website. We have opened a factory store, a warehouse store. I'll come back and talk about that. B2B. And that's been our fastest growing area. Custom socks, gift packages, starting to sell the services that we provide ourselves to other businesses. And wholesale. And we are now started from scratch with wholesale. We should be in mom and pop shops and gift stores, in, you know, hospital gift stores, in shoe stores. Right. We should be in shoe stores. You know, it's a compelling brand, it's a good story. We just have to make that happen. So, you know, John, one of the. Things, one of the things about the footwear retailer, the podcast here is that we have footwear retailers, like actual shoe store owners, come on as guests. We have great suppliers like yourself and many of the other brands, and we have other people in the industry that help support the industry, whether they're inventory specialists or marketing specialists or whatever. But the beautiful thing is that it's not just one channel for this podcast. And I'm hoping too, that this podcast will maybe snap into somebody's mind here that's listening and say, you know what? This is something that I can help these guys with too, because, you know, John and Mark, you guys are great business operators. You have a great product, you're doing good things. And we're trying to create a podcast here that helps everybody that comes on the podcast and helps everybody that listens to the podcast. So I encourage anyone here and we're going to. We're going to share John and Mark's information and everything as well, but encourage anybody here that. That can help link John and Mark to some successful sort of ideas here to reach out to them as well. I mean, that's what this is all about. Love it. Right? It's the abundance mentality, for sure. It's not a limited pie. It's not a fixed pie. It's what can we do together? We love collaborations. What can we do together to help each other? Wholesale, we are in some small places, we get to have great fun. What do we do? Well, for every wholesale store, we make videos and we share on our social media. You can find these people there. If we're in the area, and this counts in two ways. One, if you're in the New York metropolitan area, you get your shipment because John delivers it to you. But we travel a lot. We travel the country doing speaking engagements. We've been in Canada a lot. Right. We've been in Vancouver. Yeah. Edmonton and Calgary and Saskatoon. Saskatoon, I'll tell you. But when we're in an area, if there's a store that carries our socks, we're going to make an appearance. And John, you're so charming, aren't you? Frequently brings TV cameras with him. So we were up in Boston and we went to a store up there run by the Northeast Ark called Parcels. Two TV stations showed up and, you know, John comes bearing socks. So there's lots of opportunities there. I love it. I love it. Tell us a Couple of things that you're looking to do in the next, say, two to five years. Where are you hoping? John Crazy John's Crazy Socks goes like, what's the. What's the future look for you guys? We've been very fortunate with our success and the impact we've had, so we want to do more. We want to reach more people. We are creating an entity called Abilities Rising, which actually will be an umbrella group for a series of businesses, all of which have the same mission. Let's spread joy and happiness by showing what people with differing abilities can do. And there'll be three constellations of businesses, if you will, retail and E commerce. So John's Crazy Socks, we are going to open a second type of store, a gift store that has products made by people with different abilities. We're entering the publishing business, John, Finishing some books as I mine as. We looked out at the landscape of getting these published and we spoke to agents, we spoke with publishing companies. Then you look at self publishing. We realize there's a gap out there. So we're creating Abilities Rising Publishing, which will publish books by, for and about people with different abilities. Nice. As an offshoot of that, you're in the podcasting business. We have a podcast, what's our podcast been called? The Spreading Happiness Podcast with John and Moore. And we pay somebody to publish that, you know, do some lighting. But we're going to pull that in house, develop that capability ourselves. We know how to do marketing and then turn around and ultimate and eventually offer that service to other people to give a voice again, focusing on people with different abilities. So there's the retail that's create jobs, that's connect to consumers. There's giving a voice to people. And then the third is support and development. So we do a lot of speaking engagements. We have ones lined up. Next couple months, we're going to Boise, Idaho. We're going to Mobile, Alabama, we're going to Indianapolis, we're going to Sandusky, Ohio. We got all the hotspots. There you go. We're going to Baltimore, we're going to Jersey. We want to do more of that. You like doing that, don't you? Yeah. We hear from a lot of families that say, you know, we have a child who's aging out of the school system. We don't know what to do. We want help. Many of them come saying, we'd like to start a business. I talk to as many people as I can. So what we're doing, we're building a coaching business that will be able to help those people. And likewise, we hear from businesses. We'd like to tap into this. How do we develop that mission? How do we hire and employ people with different abilities? So we're creating a consulting business to be able to help them so it doesn't all happen at once. I'm a big believer in who, not how. You know, I'll take the podcast thing. Instead of me trying to figure out everything on how to do that. It's no, let me get the right person. That's it. Who will have knowledge and be able to pay attention and get everything done. Done. But we're having great fun. That's great. If there's anything, because, you know, I'm a business coach from that perspective, if there's anything that I can do to help your mission come alive and if there's anything I can do to support the businesses that are, that you're in connection with that are trying to get up and going and, and support them, I'm happy to throw in my services there too, into the mix. And we can talk about that after the podcast. Pete, I appreciate that. You're a generous man. Let me let you know, you already help us. I am a regular reader of what you publish on LinkedIn and you offer a lot of insights and inspiration and encouragement. That's very helpful. Thanks so much, John. Thanks, Mark. Thank you so much. It's been great having you back on the podcast. And John, I know you've got an appointment. We want to get you off in plenty of time here today. He's got to go lead a dance party. Yeah, exactly. Come on. We're spreading happiness with the dance party, right? It's great. You're living your mission every day and. And I love that about both of you. So thanks again for joining me here on the footwear retailer and I'm looking forward to chatting with you soon. But before we go, how can anybody that wants to learn a little bit more about John's crazy socks? Yes, I go@sean's crazysox.com check it out. Our platform YouTube channel. Tick tock the X on Twitter Instagram. It's if you're interested in speaking engagements, you can get through things. There are the coaching work or help we can offer. You can also check out john mark cronin.com you can contact us on LinkedIn. I am the only Mark X Cronin on LinkedIn. I. I smoked your name right? Well, you got to use the X or other more Cronin around. We don't want to besmirch them. Yeah, but we. We'd love to hear from people and talk to them and see other ways we can help folks or collaborate. Awesome. All right, guys, make it a great day, and thanks again. Thank you. Thank you, Pete.