EG SMITH History

"I took an almost mindless product and recreated it, in some ways, by making it fun. Choosing which socks to wear isn't a heavy decision but it doesn't have to be boring either," he says. "I love doing this...making fun design, doing a marketing campaign that's based on love and friendship. We try to bring our customer and this company closer together and it makes us happy to know our socks are making someone else happy."

The third - generation scion of a New York sock family (his father and grandfather were sales agents for southern sock mills), Smith originally planned to leave the hosiery business behind. Since childhood, he viewed himself as an artist. He knew he had a creative streak, he just didn't have the faintest idea how to tap it.
He went away to San Francisco and Berkeley to see he might discover something about himself there, but he emerged only with a political science degree and continued uncertainty. Returning East, he enrolled at New York Law School. He passed the bar in 1982, but before he could hang his shingle his muse finally called. It spake to him of athletic socks.

The growing fitness craze had taken a designer twist, and Smith hit upon the realization that every item of "athleisure" clothing except socks had been given the fashion whirl. Socks remained nondescript and, all too often, stark white. So Smith convinced an upstate New York mill that had long produced woolen boot socks to turn out a heavy-weight cotton version of its product and dye it in very color of the rainbow. Then, being a novice to garment merchandising, he simply went around to stores he frequented and persuaded each to stock a half-dozen pairs of his new creation.

As a result, Smith has gone from a handful of Manhattan locations eight years ago to around 1,000 outlets nationwide today, including sporting goods outlets, shoe stores and department stores.
Smith believes his success is due to selling not just a sock, but self-expression. "These days people think two or three times about buying a $600 jacket," he says. "Pants are now $100 in a better store. But for under $10, in a sock you can fulfill your need for something different."

With a guilelessness that would embarrass a '60s flower child, Smith has made his socks into communiques for spreading good vibes. Embroidered on his product are such messages as "Create Positivity Today Feet First," and on their very sole they often bear Smith's signature: "love, eric." "Most fashion lines require the customer to buy a whole image and lifestyle." Smith says. "I say, 'Be yourself.'"