College Students Start Sock-Selling Social Enterprise

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

[Music]

What do you do when you're a college student out seeing the world and you want to start a business, but you also want to run a social enterprise? And of course, you have to complete your coursework and do everything else. Perhaps the solution is to team up, or at least that's what today's featured story and featured students did. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and from an initial vision of washing people's laundry, the two of these students, and eventually more of them, turned to an idea of making custom socks for colleges, featuring the school's logo and colors. This group of students now has contracts with more than a hundred institutions and are earning several thousand dollars a month, all while donating a significant portion of sales to charity.

Sock it to me, stay tuned, and I'll bring you all the details. [Music]

Going on a college exchange program abroad can be a life-changing experience, and that's what Samantha Wells found. Not long after working her way through all of the vino and tapas that Spain had to offer, she met her friend and now colleague, Antoine Taylor. Antoine had recently started up a student side hustle doing laundry for his fellow classmates, but unlike the dirty clothes he was dealing with, the idea just didn't hold much water. In fact, it left him feeling a little high and dry.

But despite his lack of experience, he wasn't deterred. Moving forward, Antoine decided he would likely do better with a partner that could make up for the areas he lacked, a complimentary skill set, you could call it. And with a major in communications and business, Samantha definitely fit the bill. So when he came across another idea he thought had promise, she was at the top of his list for collaboration. Samantha and Anthony decided to make customized socks for the St. John's University students in Minnesota,

where Antoine was a junior. They figured that just because washing clothes for others didn't pan out, it didn't mean that they couldn't still build another business around clothing. Besides, who doesn't need socks? They started by taking the school logo, St. John's St. Benedict's and printed it

on a variety of socks. At that time, the school wasn't selling anything like this. The biggest challenge they had to overcome was finding a manufacturer in the area that could do the job at an affordable rate that wouldn't break the bank. In October of that year, Antoine sold the first pair of socks to one of his friends. Word quickly spread around campus and by the end of the week, they had somehow sold 512 pairs of socks.

This far exceeded their expectations and they began to consider what it would mean to scale. They didn't just mean scaling their operations, they wanted to do something more. You see, Samantha was the philanthropy chair of her sorority. As broke college students, she and Antoine definitely wanted to improve their financial situations, but they also knew there were a lot of people who were less fortunate than them. From the start, they decided they would give a percentage of their profits to charity and they named their company The Cause International.

As they enjoyed some initial success, they decided to expand operations. Friends came on board the company. They started printing and designing customized shirts and other sports apparel. Little Headway was made the following year in 2016 as most of the group was finishing up their senior year in college. But in 2017, they started reaching out to high schools and colleges offering to print their sports apparel.

This was a major challenge since they had to compete with much bigger brands such as Adidas and Nike, whom schools were used to partnering with. But with several members of the group being college athletes, they knew exactly what other athletes needed. This helped them to forge a better connection with school officials. Samantha and her group also offered something that no other organization could, the mentoring program with the students. For their efforts, they've now signed 100 schools to partnerships that generate over $4,500 a month.

Yet if you ask the members of the group, they'll tell you that that's not the biggest reward they've gained from starting the company. When they first began, they gave back almost all the profits they made to helping disadvantaged communities. For example, after that first week of big sales, The Cause International outfitted the Boys and Girls Club of South Chicago, giving kids toys and necessities. Since then, they've gone on to provide aid to communities such as Flint, Michigan, by supplying them with water bottles. They've also helped the homeless in Los Angeles by funding free haircuts and job advice.

Moving forward, they hope to provide more help internationally and are committed to donating $50,000 in 2018. None of this has been easy, especially when they had to juggle their academic work, athletics, and their business all at once. In fact, Samantha and co-founder Antoine weren't expecting this business to work out at all. The initial success of the venture, with more than 500 pair of socks sold in a week, took them by surprise. And from then on, they've just done their best to navigate the hurdles they encountered.

With a commission structure that rewards each member of the team for closing deals, Samantha believes that this is an ideal model for turning a profit all while helping local communities. It all started with washing other people's laundry, but now other people are washing the socks that they manufacture. All right, congratulations to Samantha, Antoine, and everyone else involved in this project. Socks are indeed something that everyone needs, or at least most people need socks. So in some ways, it's kind of like coffee, episode 549 we had a couple of days ago.

Just because there are a lot of people selling coffee doesn't mean that no one else can be successful as well. In this case, selling to college and universities can be particularly tough, because of those companies like Nike and Adidas that have a lock on so much business. But once you can gain a foothold, or shall we say a toehold, you can often leverage those relationships to go from one school, one university, or college, to another. And that's exactly what they did here. I think it also helps that this is a student-run endeavor.

So they're able to draw on natural relationships and connections that they already have. Anyway, check out The Cause International if you have a moment. We will, of course, link them up in the show notes. Those show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/551. That's for episode 551.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Thanks for listening today. You are a rock star. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.