Long before the conception of Socksmith Design, our founders, Eric and Ellen Gil, started their retail journey as owners of the iconic downtown Santa Cruz boutique, Sockshop & Shoe Co. 

In 2007, it became their mission to create a brand that could meet the demand of small retailers, just like Sockshop & Shoe Co.

There has been a lot of learning along the way, and the success of Socksmith can be attributed to hard work from our team, but equally from our reps and retailers. Your feedback and honesty have been fundamental to our growth. So, for that, we thank you.

Occasionally, we ask for your input on how we can take Socksmith to the next level. Since our last questionnaire at the start of 2022, we've been working our little socks off to support our retailers in every way possible. We're excited to be able to share the results with you!

With many different ways to stay connected, it's important that we can reach you in whichever way works best for you. Here's what ya'll said...

Email updates
As almost half of you prefer to receive updates by email, we've built a team to support that. We've established a consistent email marketing calendar where you can expect to hear from us with every update (small and big). Sounds like too often? You have the option to select how often you hear from us! Check out the link in the footer on all of our emails.

Social media updates
For those of you active on social media, we post all our updates there, too, so don't worry; you'll never miss a beat. More about that later...

Website updates
As a few of you like to get updates at your own leisure (on our website), we've been working hard to streamline our user experience and make it easier for you to shop our latest and greatest product and stay up-to-date with Socksmith news. Here are the improvements we've made to our site:

- At the end of last year, we added a new menu view to our site. The List View feature lets you view and add individual SKUs to your cart from the collection page!

- News and Socksmith initiatives added as announcements on the Socksmith homepage. This area used to feature collections before the change. 

- Website one-on-one tutorials. Need help navigating our site? Set up a time with our customer service team to walk you through the process on a video call. To do that, email us at: customer.service@socksmith.com or call (831) 426-6416.

Rep updates
Our reps continue to receive monthly updates from our president, and we have a dedicated inside sales team that assists them with any needs they have. Since launching our dedicated social media pages (read more later), our reps can stay up-to-date with us in the same ways you can and more! They're fully equipped to cater to your Socksmith needs and requests.

Blog updates
Only a few of you take the time to get your updates from our blog, but we're hoping that'll change. We've been putting out some epic content at least once per month, and it's stuff you won't find anywhere else. 

OK, so it was a bit of a bummer to see that many of you didn't follow the Socksmith blog. Whether that was due to the quality of content, or not knowing about it, we've done some things to address that:

High quality content written by the professionals: Our blog calendar incorporates a huge variety of topics (monthly), and our dedicated writer can put it into a format that is engaging to our audience. 
Promoting it on our website: A link to the Socksmith blog can now be found on the homepage of our website.

Blog posts shared via email and social media: Don't worry, you don't have to remember to check out the blog to see new content. Our monthly posts (like this one) will be promoted via email and social media. Choose what interests you, and go from there.

As smaller retailers, the chances are you're wearing all the hats (good, bad, and ugly). You want easily accessible resources at your fingertips. Are Socksmith's easy to find? Our Marketing Drive is the go-to place for all of your creative needs.

For those of you who know about it, but don't necessarily use it: We're packing the Drive full of content we know you'll love, like new posters and items to print, and wayyy more lifestyle images.

For those of you who are like "Marketing Drive, what?" we're doing our best to promote it at every opportunity we get. Tune in to our social media for announcements on when it gets an update! 

This feedback was awesome for us! We've been tailoring our entire marketing strategy around ways we can help you and what support we can offer. Keep reading to find out more.

In October 2022, we created brand new Instagram and Facebook pages just for our wholesale audience. Our posts include all sorts of goodies, and we'll talk about those in the next section of this blog.

Our email updates now include far more than just product updates. We're talking about industry tips and tricks, giveaways, tutorials, promotions, and more.

For the last two years, we've made it our priority to streamline our photography process. You'll find a vast offering of high-quality images for every collection; yep, every collection...

Many of you had specific requests when it came to marketing your store. Here are some of the things which came up and how we've worked to address them:

Comment
Pictures of kids' socks–either on kids or individual pictures that I could use for my FB, Instagram, and emails

Action
In July 2022, our Kids' collection saw a refresh. We switched up packaging, added more styles to choose from, and even added a new Active Youth category to our offering.

We have a ton of lifestyle images for web and print that you can download.

Comment

I have worked with some vendors that post a list of their high-volume retailers on their websites. I may not be super high volume, but one idea would be to perhaps do a social media or website campaign for different areas of your retailers.

Action
Easy! Our retail site features a Store Locator and we've promoted this via email to our D2C audience, and on social media too.

We've also collaborated with many of our smaller retailers on social to help them gain exposure. 

Comment.

I like being updated on your top sellers...It helps me add new socks to our line.

Action
All of the best sellers on our wholesale store are marked "Best Seller". You can also filter collections this way.

We also have regular email and social media campaigns scheduled to show our top-performing styles. 

Comment
I'd like to know if there's an easy way to download photos, particularly model shots, for our social media.

Action

Certainly, you can find those on our Marketing Drive. Contact marketing@socksmith.com to get access.

Comment

Once a month emails.

Action
As we mentioned earlier, we have the option on every email to select how often you'd like to hear from us, whether that is weekly monthly, or daily.

For those of you who use social media for your brand, you'll know the time it takes to create good quality content which resonates with your audience. What can Socksmith do to help?

If you followed our D2C Socksmith accounts when answering this questionnaire, we've since made dedicated wholesale Instagram and Facebook pages with more retail-specific content. 

Check, check, and check. 

Since the start of 2022, we've dedicated most of our marketing resources to our wholesale accounts. We've hired a new part-time content creator so our full-time Social Media Manager can focus her efforts directly on your needs. If you haven't already, look at our social media accounts here. We'd love your feedback!

Since you took the time to provide marketing-specific comments (thank you!), we wanted to provide a safe space for you to give any other honest feedback. Here's what you said and what we've been working to do to address it.

Comment
I don't even know who my local sales rep is. I order at shows or online. Knowing that would be nice.

Action
We've made it our mission to introduce each rep, their territory and their contact details. You can see all of that here.

Comment

Would love to see designs for other cultural holidays; Chinese New Year, Diwali, Passover, etc.

Action
We're definitely working on this. At the end of 2022, we launched a Lunar New Year sock, and there might be more in the works ;)

Comment

Nebraska (State) Socks, Outdoors Themed Socks (Lures, Trout, Deer), Wedding Party Socks, Create your own Variety Pack (where we can get one or two of a few different styles)

Action

We've added new styles per our retailers' suggestions which we anticipate well enough to meet the minimum order quantity. Keep ideas coming and we'll add them to the list.

When all is said and done, what matters to you matters to us. You definitely don't need to wait for a feedback form to give us your honest opinion. Here are the ways you can get in touch with us:

Email us: customer.service@socksmith.com or marketing@socksmith.com
Call us: 831-426-6416 (8AM to 5PM PT)
DM us on Instagram here
Facebook Message us here

But if you like a feedback form, when there's one coming your way soon! Jot down your ideas–we can't wait to hear them!