By: Nicholas Walters
Stance is a sock brand, yes, a sock brand. This is a new type of fad coming into the fashion world, taking a simple item and making improvements upon it. It can be seen from the typical retail shoe market, to the simplest of white T-shirts.
This brand of the future was founded in 2009 and quickly grew popular by becoming the official sock of the MLB. The founders were already in the business industry before creating this brand, so they knew the basics of how to run a company, but they needed a product. They went to Target to brainstorm a product and they came across socks, yes this is a product that was already “invented” per say but they took it to a new level.
Stance is built around the thought process “the uncommon thread”, now this can be interpreted in many different ways, from the thought of making funky socks that are “uncommon” to the way Stance runs day to day operations. This also gives them freedom to be the business they want to be while allowing them to accomplish many goals.
When talking to the consumers about this, the responses were simple. “Stance is a brand that is reliable while also being fashionable,” said Connor Skidmore, ‘20. Many companies strive to get to this point in their brand.
The other side of the brand is their influence on the sports world. They sponsor and provide socks for the NBA, MLB, professional skateboarders, motocross, surfers and more.
This strong hold on the sports world has continued to grow with golfers preferring to wear stance on the course.
“Stance is the only brand of sock I will wear on the course, they keep my feet dry through all 18 holes,” said Will Birkholz, ‘22.
This shows that they’re not only for the looks, but they have the technology to back them up as well. This brand makes players quite literally look good and play well.
Stance took a simple good and redesigned it into something amazing. To differ your brand from another there has to be out of the box thinking done as a whole. At this point in the business industry many of the basic changes have been made, so to be able to find new ways to go about the same industry is very hard, but Stance has found a way to make that happen.
