Journey of making socks
It's been a long and winding road to get to today. I guess no one starts a new business if they knew how long and hard the road is to get to launch day.
I naively thought there would be plenty of sock manufactuers in Australia. I would absolutely love to sell Australian made socks. But alas the type of socks I wanted to create vs the socks that were offered did not marry up. And I actually grieved over this. How was I going to make Australian made socks? Well the answer to this is, I'm can't. I can't make a manufacturer change their blend or sew the tags on if they're not able to. I just had to come to peace with this.
So I reached out to India and Turkey. From my research it seemed both countries offered great options. Some of my research findings were
- Australia made samples with no tags.
- Turkey didn't offer samples but could send me samples of what they produced.
- India could create me samples via a broker.
In the end India sent me samples and the socks were beautiful. However, they could only 'colour match' choosing from their list of 'in-house' colours. I would need to order thousands of each sock which made me nervous. The tags for the socks which could be sewn on was not nice. However I'm sure this could eventually be rectified.
On to Turkey. My chosen manufacturer sent me samples of their socks from their other clients. I was impressed. They could also have the cotton dyed to match my chosen colours. However, in order for me to receive a sample, I needed to pay a deposit. I did. And then I waited and waited. When the samples arrived the socks were great and I felt a bit more at ease. However, they couldn't send me an actual hard copy of my tags. They also couldn't sew my tags on. And they pushed my finish date out further and further.
I was expecting my order to be ready in July, but due to the pandemic was given a due date of 27th August. Which moved to 3rd September, then the 15th September and then the 19th.
I finally had my socks in my hands on Friday morning 1st October. Nine months from starting. So yes it's been a long and bumpy road to get here. But in all honestly, the socks are exactly what I dreamt they would be. I can give them out to all my friends and family with pride. Ahhh such a relief!
