COMPANY PROFILE
Eurosocks North America Inc.
Owners: Alan M. Jacober, Sandy Altman, Jim Marble
Type of Business: Designer and
wholesaler of Italian-made specialty socks
Location: 300 Centerville Road,
Suite 450 S, Warwick
Employees: 5 (including owners)
Year Founded: 2001
Annual Sales: $8 million projected
for 2006
Eurosocks North America has grown from a startup to a multimillion-dollar business in just five years by seizing niche market opportunities, innovating relentlessly and working extra-hard to meet the needs of its retail clients.
Its ski and snowboarding socks, which sell for $15 to $25, are now the second-most-popular brand in specialty stores, said Eurosocks Chairman Alan M. Jacober, and they’ve been rated best in their class three times by Ski Press USA.
Major sports labels including Scott (winter sports, motocross and more), Prince Tennis, Etonic (golf) and Burton Snowboards have chosen the company to make their branded socks.
And Eurosocks products, which also include travel and medical compression socks, are now sold not only across the United States, but also in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Switzerland and Russia, with more European markets soon to come.
But none of this has come easily.
In fact, Jacober says, Eurosocks has survived against the odds, and even today, it faces big challenges.
“We’ve done a lot of heavy lifting, and the fact that we’re still here is amazing,” said Sandy Altman, a partner and vice president. “We work as hard as we can and we try to stay humble, because that’s the way it works. You’ve got to be humble and you’ve got to be hungry.”
Eurosocks was born out of partner Jim Marble’s discovery of a factory in Brescia, Italy, that was making specialty socks for clients including Polo and Fila. After trying to start a business with the factory on his own, Marble approached Jacober, and in December 2000, Jacober went to Italy and met with the factory owner.
Having owned the Alpine Ski Shop for 20 years, until 1988, Jacober knew that most socks were “pretty mundane” – in boring colors, with no special features. The Italian factory, however, could make socks with special padding and support, in bright, fashionable patterns.
“I saw something that wasn’t being done in the sock business,” Jacober said. Within a month, he had struck a deal with the manufacturer. In September 2001, they shipped their first orders.
Then, terrorists struck the Pentagon and the Twin Towers.
“I would say 70 percent of our orders were canceled,” Jacober recalled. “We had all this inventory and no customers, because after the 11th, nobody wanted to try something new.”
In the venture’s first year, Jacober said, they sold about $200,000 worth of socks.
They survived by relying on their own resources and the help of friends and family, after their original bank sent them packing. Getting more financing was “extremely difficult,” Jacober said.
Yet gradually, they recovered and began to grow. By 2003, Eurosocks had built a strong network of specialty retailers. They also had gotten their socks into high-end catalogs: Hammacher Schlemmer, L.L. Bean, TravelSmith. “The word would get out about how good our product was, and how easy we were to deal with,” Jacober said.
Eurosocks delivers stock ready to sell, with UPC codes and prices already affixed, in evenly sized display boxes that look neat but also allow customers to pull out the socks, look at them, touch them.
Unlike many wholesalers, who make one delivery per season, Eurosocks accepts smaller orders, so retailers can try more styles and restock quickly if something sells out.
The company also keeps updating and expanding its product line, adding new products, new fibers, new technical features, new colors, patterns and designs. The partners watch trends closely and come up with new concepts for their U.S. and Italian designers to develop.
“The biggest compliment we get is at the trade shows, and it’s imitation,” Altman said. “We’ll do something one year – flames or a zebra pattern – and the following year, our competition is trying to do the same thing, but we’ve moved on.”
Over time, a new challenge has emerged for Eurosocks, as the dollar’s value relative to the Euro has dropped by about 40 percent, Jacober said.
At some point, he said, the partners hope it will bounce back. “Until that point, it’s almost impossible for this company to make money.”
Yet looking ahead, they’re optimistic. They want to set up an East Coast warehouse – most likely, in Rhode Island – to complement their warehouse in Arizona, and they want to add more employees to their local operation.
“Our roots are here, and this is where we want to stay,” Jacober said.
