Today me and a friend visited Samy Liechti founder and owner of Blacksocks in Zürich. We interviewed him for a case study in our course Leadership/Entrepreneurship. Blacksocks is selling a subscription for socks as a core business but extend lately to underwear. It was really intersting to have a chat with Mr. Liechti.
First I´d like to describe the environment. We arrived in front of the house, Blacksocks was supposed to be in, but there wasn´t any indication of a company. There was no sign, the house looked more like a detached house. But the number indicated that we were at the right address. We went to the second floor and even there was no indication or sign. Only because he told me beforehand that we should come to the reception in the second floor passed the door and entered. Inside it looked more like an art gallery than an office. But we were at the right place and the reception lady indicated us the meeting room we could go in. After he arrived as well in the room he offered us coffee and served it himself - in plastic cups, the ones you usually buy in the supermarket for family celebrations. It was a very sympathic ambiance!
Our intervied finally was about the innovation and how they founded a company, characteristics of an entrepreneur and so on. I don´t to reproduce everything but only some things:
First I´d like to describe the environment. We arrived in front of the house, Blacksocks was supposed to be in, but there wasn´t any indication of a company. There was no sign, the house looked more like a detached house. But the number indicated that we were at the right address. We went to the second floor and even there was no indication or sign. Only because he told me beforehand that we should come to the reception in the second floor passed the door and entered. Inside it looked more like an art gallery than an office. But we were at the right place and the reception lady indicated us the meeting room we could go in. After he arrived as well in the room he offered us coffee and served it himself - in plastic cups, the ones you usually buy in the supermarket for family celebrations. It was a very sympathic ambiance!
Our intervied finally was about the innovation and how they founded a company, characteristics of an entrepreneur and so on. I don´t to reproduce everything but only some things:
- They started back in 1999 to sell on the internet, at a time where only a small part of people already had access to the internet. There were not so many doing this already, that´s why Blacksocks and LeShop were the ones always mentioned as swiss examples for e-business.
- In the first years they were very motivated and euphoric. Everything was going well, there was a hype for the Internet. On 10.9.01 they were almost celebrating, because they got a 4 min. coverage on CNN and they could see live how there sales were increasing. But the day afterwards it hit them as well like many others, but maybe even a bit more. There whole infrastructure for the US market was in the WTC...
- The factors of success he thinks are passion, bravery, simplicity and not being status oriented but loving what your doing and doing it because you like to implement an idea. Simple they still are - most of the stuff they outsource or lease and rent, even the table and the chairs in their meeting room is rented and not their property!
- His best moment with Blacksocks he says, was when they won the Copernican Award in New York and he was standing with this heavy, ugly thing on 5th Avenue (by the way Flickr was on the 2nd place:)
To summarize it was really interesting and I think it would be more fun for students to do more such things than sitting in classes... Aaaand next time you need socks or underwear check out www.blacksocks.com - they might have something for you!
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