Finance Professionals Go Gorillas for Bamboo Fiber Socks

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. Got a fun story for you today. I'm calling it finance professionals go gorillas for bamboo fiber socks.

This story is all about connecting a for-profit endeavor to a cause. Specifically, it's about these two guys in New York City who decide to make socks and rescue gorillas. And as part of the story, we'll also talk about sourcing or manufacturing a product. And I'm gonna compare this a bit to the Merch by Amazon process that we talked about recently. In that story, the only thing that the person needed to source was designs.

She didn't actually have to do any screen printing or stock inventory, anything like that. So it was a much simpler process. But in this case, these guys wanted to have a physical product of their own. So it's not that one way is better than the other, but there are definitely some pros and cons. This is why it's so important to understand why you want to start a side hustle, what are your goals, 'cause that will then determine the best path for you.

I'll cycle back at the end and talk a bit more about that. But first, I'll bring you that going gorilla story right after a quick thank you to our sponsor. [Music]

Gianluca Di Stefano's side hustle involves both socks and gorillas. You might wonder how those things are related, but to Gianluca and his business partner, Gavin Camara, the connection was clear. The idea came to them one day in 2015 while they were riding bikes along the Hudson River in New York City.

They'd known each other since they were roommates in college. And starting a side hustle was something they talked about for years, but they just didn't have the right idea. During this bike ride, Gavin mentioned that he'd been reading about bamboo fibers. He was intrigued to learn that bamboo fibers are eco-friendly because bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world, and it requires only a third of the water needed to grow cotton. Beyond the environmental factors, bamboo fibers are also antibacterial, and they're great at thermoregulation, keeping you warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

With all those great features and their shared love of footwear, Gianluca and Gavin thought that bamboo fibers would make excellent socks. But they didn't want to just own a sock shop. They both had good jobs in finance, so starting a side hustle wasn't just about making extra money. They wanted to have fun and do good with their business. They wanted their brand to give back.

So they knew from the start that whatever they did, they wanted to partner with a nonprofit organization and donate a percentage of profits. But before they could give back, they needed something to give. Specifically, they needed a product. So they set about doing some market research. They had noticed from their own experience that business attire in the corporate world in both New York and London had slowly become more relaxed.

Fewer men were wearing ties and more were using socks as a way to differentiate their style. They wanted to tap into that market in a more sustainable way using those bamboo fibers. The goal was to create socks with personalities, socks that they would want to wear. They designed a mix of plain colors and patterns that they'd both be proud to wear to work. While that process was taking place, they were also tracking down an overseas manufacturer using the directory Alibaba and they found a good match in China.

After making a few prototypes, they sent the files off to their manufacturer to get samples. After some back and forth and making various changes, they were ready to place a real order. John Luca and Gavin now had a product on the way, but what about those gorillas? Well, in their search for a nonprofit, they had just watched a documentary called "Verunga," which highlighted the precarious situation of gorillas in the wild. From there, they looked into organizations working on gorilla conservation and they found one called the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund.

This fund had been working on protecting gorilla habitats in various countries in Africa for over 50 years. They were also working closely with local communities and supporting scientific research. It seemed like the perfect choice, so they reached out to the fund and were excited when they agreed. With a product and a partnership, they could now create a brand and a website. They call this brand Gorilla Socks.

Sometimes the obvious choice is the best. John Luca and Gavin admitted that they knew very little about marketing when they began. They thought they would post on Instagram, get some shout outs from other brands, buy a few ads and be all set. Well, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that easily. They made a number of missteps.

One of their biggest missteps was paying for advertising in a renowned print magazine that contacted them directly. They got no traffic from the ad, no sales, and it served no purpose other than paying the magazine. John Luca says that was money down the drain. One other misstep was starting out with a fulfillment center. It seemed like a good idea for somebody else to do the shipping, but it turned out to be a poor fit for their business.

Fulfillment centers work on volume, and Gorilla Socks didn't have a lot of volume. They quickly switched to taking care of their own shipments so that they were in control and didn't have the extra overhead. So those are some of the mistakes, what went well. After a couple of months of pitching their product to anyone who would listen, they realized they needed to get much more targeted. They began to zero in on who their customer really was, and they used Facebook ads and Etsy to target those people more specifically.

They also got better at telling their story and sharing their cause, which helped increase their effectiveness on Instagram. Since launching in October 2016, sales have increased month by month. They've now made more than $10,000, but so far are investing most profits back into the business in addition to making multiple donations to the Gorilla Fund. John Luca says, "I still remember our first sale like it was yesterday. It was only $16, but we felt like it was a great achievement.

Today our first customer has his own discount code. He can get 50% off all our socks for life." That was our way to say thank you for getting us going. For John Luca and Gavin, the best part of Gorilla Socks is knowing that they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. They're creating a brand built on possibility and finally building the venture they've long talked of. I'll write a couple of different points here.

First of all, congratulations to the Gorilla Socks guys. It sounds like a fun project and I love the connection between the fashion brand and the nonprofit, helping out those gorillas protecting their environment. I wanted to mention two things. First of all, about the fulfillment center. In this story, as you heard, these guys thought it would be a good idea to get somebody else to do their shipping.

And you can probably imagine how they came to that conclusion. They thought, oh, we're gonna have a ton of orders and we're busy with our day jobs. We need to make sure we're focusing our time on marketing or creating new products or other activities that are gonna move the business forward. Now that's often an appropriate strategy. In fact, that's the best strategy for a lot of people.

We featured numerous other stories on the show where people do their own shipping or at least start doing their own shipping but then it becomes overwhelming. And one of the best things that they can do is to outsource that and to hand that off to somebody else. So what's the difference? I think first of all, it goes back to goals. Like what are your goals?

What are you trying to do? In this case, it was important to these guys to have a close connection with their customers. And part of doing that was handling the shipping themselves. And they also didn't have a lot of orders in the beginning which is not unusual. It often takes time to scale up.

So if you're doing some kind of product like this, it may be best to not worry about the fulfillment center at first. Just plan to do the shipping yourself. And if it takes off, well, then you can worry about the next step of going out and researching and finding the right company to handle that for you. But in the beginning, it's far more important to make sure you've got the right product and you're reaching the right people and you're seeing sales that you refine your marketing strategy as you go along just like these guys did. Also a quick note on manufacturing or sourcing items from abroad.

I mentioned Alibaba. We're gonna talk about that resource a few times throughout the year. I will link that up in the show notes. It's basically a directory where you can go and there are all these companies overseas where you can look for a cost-effective match between your idea, your product and a supplier. It does take a bit of work to kind of delve into it but it's also pretty user-friendly in the sense that a lot of people who are using Alibaba are not big companies.

They're just small businesses or side hustlers or people like a lot of our listeners who are just kind of learning how this works. So I might give you an action point to just go to that website, take a look and see kind of how the process works, maybe look at some categories, get some ideas just in case you want to do some kind of product-based side hustle. And of course, there are lots of other ways to do this as well. In the beginning, I mentioned the story about Lisa who did merch by Amazon. She didn't have to worry about any of this stuff.

She didn't need to consider how she was gonna ship items because Amazon does that for her. Lots of different models and ways to do things. That's why there's so much creativity in this process. You can make it work for you the way that's best for you. To check that out or to hear the other episode or to learn more about GorillaSocks, just come to sidehustleschool.com/377.

That's for episode 377. Don't forget, inspiration is good but inspiration with action is better. I hope you take even a small step today to create more freedom and security for yourself. Maybe make a positive difference in the world as well just like the GorillaSocks guys are doing. And wherever you are in the world, whatever you're up to, I'll be cheering you on.

Thanks for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]