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Starting a Sock Brand: Private Label from Design to First Order
SOCKS ARE THE EASIEST APPAREL CATEGORY TO START IN
If you're building an apparel brand, socks are the sensible first product — and not because they're a small ambition.
Sizing barely matters. Four sizes cover almost every adult. Compare that to t-shirts, where you'll carry six sizes, guess the curve wrong, and sit on stock for two years.
The minimum is achievable. A first run in Team Feet Labs — our extended range — is 100 pairs per style. That's a real launch quantity, not a container load.
Margins are good. A well-made custom sock retails at 3–4× production cost, and customers accept that pricing because they can feel the difference.
They're repeat purchase. Nobody buys one pair of socks once.
That's the pitch. Here's the actual work.
THE SIX DECISIONS
1. What's the product for? Fashion, performance, or both. This decides the base, the fibre, and everything downstream. A streetwear sock and a running sock share almost no specification.
2. How many styles? Start with one or two, not six. Every style is a separate 100-pair minimum, a separate sample, and separate stock risk. Brands that launch with eight SKUs usually sell three and write off the rest.
3. Direct knit or sublimation? Knit for bold graphics and durability. Sublimation for photographic or complex artwork. We've written a full guide — but send us the artwork and we'll tell you which it wants.
4. What's your price point? Decide the retail price first, work backwards to what you can spend on production. Not the other way round.
5. Packaging? A printed band costs very little and changes what you can charge. For a new brand it's not optional.
6. Who's your first customer? The brands that succeed have an answer before they order. A pre-sale, a stockist, an existing audience, an event. "We'll put it on a website" is not an answer.
WHAT IT COSTS
Illustrative, not a quote — your number depends on height, decoration, fibre and quantity.
| Design and mockups | Free |
| Pre-production sample | Small cost, sometimes waived |
| Production, 100 pairs | The main spend |
| Freight | Included |
| Packaging | Small per unit |
| Typical retail multiple | 3–4× production cost |
The number that surprises people is how much the per-pair cost drops with volume. The gap between 100 and 500 pairs is significant. If you're confident in demand, ordering deeper on fewer styles beats spreading thin.
THE TIMELINE
| Weeks | Stage |
|---|---|
| 0 | Send artwork, brief the product |
| 1 | First mockups back |
| 1–3 | Revisions and sign-off |
| 4–5 | Pre-production sample made and approved |
| 6–8 | Production |
| 9–10 | Freight and delivery |
Ten weeks, comfortably. Longer in Q4, when every brand in the world is producing for Christmas.
The variable is your own decision-making. Brands with one decision-maker move at the top of that range; brands with a committee and an investor don't.
THE FOUR MISTAKES
Too many styles in run one. The single most common and most expensive error.
Skipping the sample. You are about to own 100+ pairs of something. Look at one first.
Designing for a screen. A sock is curved, stretched, and seen from two metres. Fine detail and small text disappear. Design for the medium.
No plan for the stock. Production is the easy part. Selling is the business.
WHAT WE ACTUALLY DO
Team Feet Labs is our extended range — the specialist constructions, built for brands, events, promotional programmes and licensed merch rather than club kit alone.
For a private label launch that means:
✅ Free design and unlimited revisions, from a logo or a rough idea
✅ 90+ proven bases to start from rather than a blank sheet
✅ Honest guidance on what will and won't reproduce
✅ A physical sample before you commit
✅ 100 pairs per style, not a container
SEND US THE IDEA
You don't need finished artwork or a tech pack. A logo, a reference image, and a sentence about who it's for is enough to start.
Free designs, free revisions, and a pre-production sample before full production. Free shipping from 30 pairs. 100 pairs per style on the Team Feet Labs range.