The Simple Reason Entrepreneurs Are Embracing the Wonky, Unsexy World of B2B
In 2011, Noah Lee and Dane Jensen were young guys a few years out of college and in search of a business idea. They stumbled across a story about a company selling black Italian socks. Just black. Just Italian. By subscription only. The company had tens of thousands of subscribers.
Related: 5 Tips for Developing Your B2B Sales
Jensen got excited, built a website and called it Sock of the Month Club. “I was more dismissive,” Lee admits. But he went along. It was a part-time gig. Plus, most people wear socks. And they can’t all just want basic black, right?
Six years later, Lee and Jensen are shipping 40,000 to 50,000 pairs of socks monthly and annual revenue approaches $4 million. But the business turned out very different than they expected (and now has a shortened name, Sock Club). When they debuted, they -- because, well, was ramping up. And then they discovered that companies like Salesforce, Cisco and Slack wanted custom-made socks to promote their brands. Sock Club pivoted to serve those businesses, and orders zoomed 200 to 300 percent annually.
