Walking around Seattle, it is easy to be captivated by the beauty of the historic Space Needle. But thanks to the Strideline sock company, you do not have to be in downtown Seattle to enjoy the view of the Seattle skyline, or any of the other of the eleven city skyline designs that they offer.
Riley Goodman and Jake Director, both 22 and University of Washington students, grew up in the small town of Issaquah, Wash. Whether it is classes, living down the street from each other, or playing on the same lacrosse team, the two have been inseparable since grade school. Even then they knew that they wanted to start a company together, but they never knew they would become the co-founders of a multi-million dollar company.
Their dream finally became a reality in June 2009, just months before their high school graduation, when they came up with a company that produces high quality crew socks for lacrosse players- then called Sea Town Lax. The design they envisioned was of the Seattle skyline, and they drew it up quickly on Microsoft paint.
Once the concept emerged, they used websites such as Alibaba and Tradekey to find a manufacturer to get their vision off the screen and on people’s feet.
“We walked into Western Union and each took $700 of our graduation money out of our pockets and transferred it to the manufacturer for our first 1,000 pairs of socks,” Goodman said.
To the co-founder’s surprise, the first order sold out in just three short weeks and had another shipment ordered by the end of the summer.
“We would take the socks to booths at lacrosse tournaments and just charge $6 cash for every pair, and it worked,” Director said.
“I remember being in high school and everyone wore them, but I never thought that the company would get this big,” said Blake Miller, a friend of Goodman. “I feel really proud to know the guys, and it just shows how entrepreneurship should be taken seriously at any age.”
Once Goodman and Director became sophomores in college they decided to expand their market from only selling to lacrosse players. The duo went around to local retail stores in Seattle giving them socks to put on their shelves for free as a trial to see how well they would sell. Once the socks sold, Goodman’s phone was flooded with requests for shipments, which quickly put Strideline’s name on the map in the Pacific Northwest.
These ambitious co-founders went from storing their shipments in their fraternity basement, to building up a full website and selling their brand domestically and internationally in places such as Canada, the Philippines and China.
All in all, the company took roughly four and a half years to get fully up and running to where they felt comfortable in such a competitive market. Now there are eleven more city skyline options for the brand including Los Angeles, Portland, Miami, and Chicago.
Within the last year the socks have been seen on many professional athletes and celebrity names such as Marshawn lynch, Golden Tate, Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Nate Robinson and Mac Miller.
“Ya’ know it’s really cool to turn on Monday Night Football and see Golden Tate wearing them, or get tagged in a tweet of Snoop Dogg saying that his sock game is on point; this just keeps getting better and better,” Goodman said.
Strideline was fortunate enough to earn $2 million in sales last year and with expansion plans in place, the company is hoping to earn even more this year. Goodman is currently taking a quarter off from school to focus on the market in Asia, while Director is enrolled at U.W. and is continuing to pursue his degree in business.
The socks are sold for $13.95 now and can be found at any major retailer including Champs, Nordstrom, Lids, Finish Line, Macy’s and Amazon.
“As a company we want to stay true to making quality brand athletic apparel for our customers,” Director said. “We want to keep our reputation as the ‘Jordan’ of socks’.”
