Do you like socks? John Lee Cronin likes socks. This 29-year-old man with Down syndrome likes them so much that he, along with his dad Mark, made the decision in December of 2016 to start a sock company called “John’s Crazy Socks.” To quote their website at www.johnscrazysocks.com, “We provide same-day shipping and every package includes a hand-written thank you note from John and some candy.” We think that their mission to "spread happiness" is an admirable one, so we reached out to John and his dad for an interview, shown below.
John says that he and his father want to “[show] what people with differing abilities can do” and “spread happiness”. John says, “In the fall of 2016, I had entered my last year of school at Huntington High School. I began looking around to find what I could do when I left school. I looked at jobs, programs, and schools. I did not see anything I liked.” He decided to create his own job to fill this space, which prompted his Dad Mark to call him “a natural entrepreneur.” The two of them went into business together, and John had a lot of ideas for a business to start. At one point after watching the movie Chef (about a father and son bonding over a food truck), John suggested they open a food truck of their own, but had a bit of a problem: neither one of them were good at cooking. And then John suggested a “crazy sock” company.
Why socks, you’re probably asking? I asked John the same question, and he said, “Because they’re fun, colorful and creative and they always let me be me. I wore crazy socks my whole life. We used to drive around looking for them. We opened our online store in December 2016 to test the idea. In two weeks, we shipped 452 orders and we knew we had something. We started with 37 different socks. Today, we have almost 4,000 different socks. More than half of my colleagues have a different ability. We have shipped 500,000 packages to 94 different countries. And we have raised over $800,000 for our charity partners like the Special Olympics, the Autism Society of America and the National Down Syndrome Society. I’d like to say that we’re just getting started.”
Back when they’d sold 452 pairs of socks, and broke over $13k in revenue, John says that “I knew we could sell socks. I knew we could find people who loved colorful and fun socks as much as me.” and Mark says “We tested the idea and the results said we could make John’s Crazy Socks a success. We did not know how fast it would grow or how big it would grow, but we knew we could make it work.” Seeing these initial results, Mark says “energized us and gave us confidence. We opened the online store to test the idea, and the initial results exceeded our expectations. We knew at that point that we could grow the business. We did not know how big it would become or how fast it would grow, but we knew we could make something of it.” Since that day, they’ve sold over two million pairs!
John really likes having his dad as a business partner, saying, “We get to do so many things together. He gives me strength and confidence and encourages me all the time. We have fun.”
In John’s own words, “Down syndrome never holds me back. I don’t think of myself as a person with Down syndrome. I am an entrepreneur and a leader.”
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article!
