Fresh Loaf

Houston sells — you guessed it — socks. Lots and lots of them. But why socks? And how did he get started in this business?

Tell me a about how you began selling socks.

One day, I saw a guy selling socks out of the trunk of his car and I thought to myself, “That might work on a massive scale.” So I started selling socks out of the trunk of my car. I started going from neighborhood to neighborhood, from barbershops to beauty salons to grocery stores to plazas. And I had this little beat-up car, and I put a sign on the side of it that said “Socks” and my phone number. People called me, and one thing led to another. I graduated and I got myself a van. A buddy of mine painted a sign on the side of the van. It said “Sock Man.”

Before I go on and tell you the rest of the story, let me tell you a little bit about where I came from and how difficult it was. I was strung out on drugs. I was homeless for years, and I lived in a cardboard box. My store that I have on Glenwood Road in Decatur that’s open today, I used to sleep behind that building in a cardboard box. I grew up right in this neighborhood. I came out of high school with a football scholarship to Florida State University. To get out of college and stumble into an addiction that took me to the gates of hell was really a traumatic experience.

I have several stores right now, and a couple of trucks on the street. We sell socks to everybody. We sell to churches. We sell to community events. We donate socks to the Hosea Feed the Hungry. I plan on continuing selling socks the rest of my life, I love it, I have a passion for it and I cannot imagine anything else I would want to do.

Talk a little about how the economy is effecting your business.

At one point, we had seven locations and several trucks. The operation was huge. With the economy taking a turn people still buy socks, but they just don’ t buy as many.

How much are your socks?

We sell 12 pairs of socks for $5. We have a special that we run every Christmas and back-to-school: 50 pairs of socks for $10.

How much is that per sock?

That’s 45 cents a pair. When I first started, there was a guy selling 30 pairs of socks for $10, and my base price was 12 for $5. How can I compete with him? People were like, “Joe around the corner sells them for 30 for $10.”

And so I found a dealer in another state, who could sell me socks at a better price. I could buy them by the pound. So I came out with 50 pairs for $10, and it blew the roof off of my business. People were demanding it. They could get it off the truck. They could get it at a street corner. They could get it out of the store. They could call me and I would bring it to their house.

How are you able to sell socks so cheap?
We go to the manufacturer and we buy them “in the grey.” That’s what they call it before they are bleached and boarded and shaped. We do that process ourselves, and that is how we’re able to sell them so cheap. But they are great quality socks.

What drugs were you addicted to?

Crack cocaine is the main one, and alcohol. I was addicted on and off for eight years.

How were you able to get clean?

I checked myself into rehab years ago, and got into AA meetings and NA meetings that sustained me. And it sustains me today.

And you were literally living in a cardboard box?

There was a furniture store on Glenwood, and when they got new furniture they would throw out the boxes. I would take those boxes, ’cause they are strong. And I would shape them in such a way that I could build a little house. It was no bigger than eight feet by four feet wide. This is a mile and a half from my mother’s house, and I am living in a cardboard box.

It was raining a heavy, huge thunderstorm. I remember the box got so wet that my house caved in, and I said to myself, “I cannot do this anymore. This is crazy I.” And I made that walk. I have problems with my knee, and it was aching that day. I remember getting a stick, using it as a cane and walking to my mother’s house and begging them to let me in. I will never forget that night. That was a life changing experience.

What position did you play when you played college football?

I was a linebacker at Florida State for five years. I played in two Orange bowls and a Fiesta bowl. Deon Sanders was on the team when I was a senior. When I got there in the 80’s Florida state was a Cinderella team.

What was it like being a college football player?

Oh man, it was wild. The exposure to life, the people that I met, the connections that I made — you know, as a guy coming out of the suburbs, coming out of a black neighborhood in Atlanta, you don’t have much going on. And I was able to get a college scholarship to go to a major university and get an education that was a tremendous blessing for me. It opened my eyes to a lot of things in life that I never new existed.

How many pairs of socks do you sell a year?

Oh man, I never thought about that. Let’s calculate this out. I would say I sell about a couple hundred thousands pairs of socks a year. Now, when we had seven stores we were selling probably close to a million pairs of socks a year. That’s a lot of socks.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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