I will spend inordinate amounts of my disposable income on shirts, jeans, suits, shoes — but ask me to spend decent cash on socks and I simply recoil.
I hate shopping for socks, I feel like any time I buy them — despite their utility — I’m wasting money, and therefore tend to wear them until they offer clear views of the feet inside before I venture into my nearest department store to shell out more dollars on that most necessary of sartorial evils.
David Verle felt the same way before he decided to put his proverbial foot down, utilize his entrepreneurial mettle for the good of mankind, and make some money in the process.
The Vancouver-based Verle launched Monthlysocks.com last December, a website dedicated to providing men like myself a monthly delivery service to take the pain out of sock-shopping.
“I was in London in a board meeting with a bunch of men in suits,” Verle, 36, recalls of his inspirational moment in 2005.
“All of us were wearing nice suits and nice shoes, but the socks were not always on par with the rest of the ensemble. I started thinking to myself that most men dislike shopping and the last thing on their mind is usually socks.”
Verle was right, and since then hasn’t looked back, adding the already-profitable Monthlysocks.com to his business portfolio with two new websites, Monthlyundies.com and Monthlyhose.com, currently under development.
Subscribers — who have thus far between about half men and women — the latter purchasing most subscriptions as gifts — receive a pair of socks in the mail once a month or less frequently, depending on their package.
For the record, according to Monthlysocks.com’s handy sock calculator, in my 29 years I’ve worn approximately 7,540 pairs of socks and I’ve owned roughly 870 pairs. That’s also a lot of holes.
So was this idea a stroke of testosterone-inspired brilliance? Maybe, but it’s more likely to do with the instincts of a smart entrepreneur picking up on the potential to deliver a service to guys who can’t be bothered to take time to replace what can be truly embarrassing accessories if stretched to their thread-bare limits.
But that doesn’t answer the question of why some men will walk around with their toes peaking out of socks, but have no problem dropping $150 on a nice meal, $5,000 on a Rolex or $100,000 on a sports car.
“It’s a mystery, just like the mystery of why socks go missing when they come out of the dryer,” Verle says. “I’m the first one to admit that I was one of those guys. I don’t have that problem now because we have thousands of socks in our warehouse.”
