John Cronin and Mark Cronin Co-Founders of John’s Crazy Socks

Not liking the choices he faced, John turned to his father and said, “I want to go into business with you.” John had worked with Mark before and he thought the best way to find a job he would love was to create one. To Mark, this seemed like a great plan.

The two would-be partners needed to come up with an idea for their business. John’s first suggestion? A fun store. “I wanted something fun and creative.” Though neither of them could figure out what a fun store would actually sell.  

Next, John suggested a food truck. He had seen the movie Chef starring Jon Favreau, about a father-son food truck business. The two started cooking up plans on what they could serve when they ran into a problem. John explained, “We can’t cook.”

With his food truck initiative gone, John hit his Eureka moment. “Let’s sell socks.” John suggested they sell crazy socks. He even had the name for the business and some drawings of the website. Asked why socks, John says, “I wore crazy socks my entire life. They are fun, colorful and creative. They let me be me.”

Mark adds, “John had worn crazy socks his entire life, that was his thing. We would drive around looking for them. It seemed as if John loved fun socks so much, others would too.”

John and Mark set out to build their business. They built a website in Shopify, an e-commerce platform. They convinced some suppliers to sell them some inventory. They opened bank accounts and filed with the State of New York. The only marketing they did was to set up a Facebook page and shoot some low-fi videos with John talking about his socks. That’s when John came up with his catchphrase: “socks, socks and more socks.” And they committed to donating 5 percent of earnings to the Special Olympics.

The partners intended to open their business at 10 a.m. but their website crashed that morning, so they opened at 3 p.m. They waited to see what would happen.

Fortunately, they did not need to wait long. Orders began streaming in. Almost all of them were local people that knew the pair in Huntington.  And the customers came because they loved John’s videos.

John wanted to make the first packages special, so they decided to make home local deliveries. They put the sock in red boxes, added some candy and a thank you note from John. Then they loaded up the car with the boxes and drove around so John could knock on doors.

And our customers loved it. They took pictures with John and pictures of the socks and shared them on social media. Word began to spread and more orders came in. By the end of that first month, John’s Crazy Socks had shipped 452 orders and earned more than $13,000 in revenue.

John and Mark wanted to test the idea of selling socks online and the response was very positive. Mark says, “We learned three things:

People want to buy socks. People want to buy socks from John. This young man and this old man can sell socks”

“We want to show the world what is possible. We want to show the world what people with differing abilities can do when given a chance. We know that people with differing abilities are ready, willing and able to work. We make this happen in ways large and small.” John Cronin

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