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JULY 24, 2002 EURO-TECH By Jack Ewing A Web Outfit with Socks Appeal Blacksocks.com's formula is simple: It sends "sockscribers" regular shipments of the boring necessity -- and makes money doing it
He just may be right. Think about it. Lots of guys wear business suits. And almost every guy in a suit wears socks -- usually black ones. But buying socks is boring and time consuming. Why not sell black socks by subscription? That was Liechti's thinking back in 1994. Every few months, customers, or "sockscribers," would get a fresh shipment of nice, black, Italian-made cotton socks. INSPIRATION IN A HOLE. Liechti, whose career so far has included a stint at the Zurich office of ad agency Leo Burnett, claims he got the idea while attending a Japanese tea ceremony with clients. He removed his shoes and, to his embarrassment, realized his socks didn't match. Worse, one of his big toes was poking out. Bingo: business plan. To be sure, lots of young would-be entrepreneurs were having similar e-commerce brainstorms in the '90s, and most of them now feel lucky if they got their old corporate jobs back. But (Blacksocks.com), which went online in July, 1999, is still alive and kicking, having grown to hit its 2001 sales target of 1 million Swiss francs, or $685,000. Liechti says the company, which has 14,000 sockscribers, aims this year to hit $1 million in sales. A graduate of the University of St. Gallen, one of Europe's top business schools, Liechti says the business is profitable, although he concedes, "I'm not a millionaire yet." What a quaint, nostalgic thought coming from a Netrepreneur. KEEP IT SIMPLE. An annual sockscription starts at $69 for three deliveries over the next 12 months, each shipment containing three pairs. That's a little under $8 a pair. You can specify knee- or calf-length, but that's as much choice as you get. Liechti is a radical believer in the credo: Keep it simple. Lots of other e-commerce ventures folded because they failed to respect that principle, he figures. Blacksocks also applies the same philosophy to management. The only employees are Liechti, co-founder Marcel Roth, 36, and a business-school student who helps with customer service. Shipping, ordering, and information technology are handled by contractors. "This is the best way you can use the Internet from a startup point of view," says St. Gallen lecturer Marcus Schoegel, who is also a Blacksocks customer. Part of the secret of Blacksocks' success may also be Liechti's droll approach to marketing. Blacksocks guarantees, for example, that its products will always match. It's calling the new line of white socks, aimed at doctors, Blacksocks Health. EXCITABLE CUSTOMERS. Liechti also has tried to build brand awareness with stunts such as sponsoring a team in the Berlin Marathon last September. The runners, led by co-founder Roth, wore black socks, of course, to test the product "under extreme conditions." The real genius of Blacksocks may be the way it takes an emblem of conformity and transforms it into something fun and vital. Like a box of Cracker Jack, every shipment of black socks contains a surprise, such as a tube of blister salve or a toe-nail file. "It's hard to find another product as boring as socks," admits Liechti. "We put in little gifts, so people get excited when they receive their subscription." Blacksocks also promotes itself as an offbeat gift. Last Valentine's Day, women could treat the men in their lives to perfumed socks. And Liechti is trying to get into the business-to-business market, selling Blacksocks as attention-getting incentives for salespeople or customer premiums. MODEST AMBITIONS. Next on the agenda is more international expansion, but within strict limits. While Blacksocks will ship anywhere, it has concentrated marketing in German-speaking Europe. Liechti plans to expand into Britain, where a lot of people wear black socks with business suits and appreciate ironic humor. But that's probably as much international reach as Blacksocks can handle right now. "That's big enough," Liechti says. And no, he doesn't expect to go public -- it's too much hassle. In a couple of years, though, he plans to decide if selling black socks is his life's work, or whether he should offload the company and do something else. It's too early to say what that next career choice might be. But it's a good bet that whatever Liechti decides to market will be simple, stupid, and good for a chuckle. Hey, socks may be dull, but they can be profitable online -- and in this environment, that's nothing to complain about there.  Ewing covers the European technology scene from BusinessWeek's Frankfurt bureau Edited by Douglas Harbrecht Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | JULY |
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