Socks

[Yet another essay by Seth Gobin from his upcoming book Small is the New Big. This one is as example of turning a commodity into a fashion statement. How do you make the ordinary and mundane exciting? Is it by spinning it differently and presenting a new package? Or is it something inherent in the product that makes it easier to do so? Is an iPod all that different from a sock?]


I love this Web site: LittleMissmatch.com

They sell mismatched socks for eleven-year-old girls. Hundreds of varieties, four categories so you don’t clash. Only sold in odd lots. You can’t buy a pair. There are 133 styles, and none of them match.

Think about how easy this was to do, and how remarkable it is. Think about how many sock marketers thought of this and then got scared and didn’t go for it. Realize how turning socks into a remarkable collectible is both obvious and satisfying and likely to succeed.

I wish they came in my size.

But why should you care about socks? After all, you make something serious, you sell to big business, you have a factory, you deal in intangibles.

That’s exactly why you should care. Socks used to be a low-margin, low-interest commodity. Littlemissmatch.com changes that by creating a fashion. Why, precisely, can’t you?