San Clemente-based sock and underwear maker Stance was already one of Orange County’s fastest-growing private businesses the past few years, even without a stand-alone retail presence in the area or a formalized marketing brand campaign.
Now it has both, and the sky’s the limit for the venture capital-backed apparel company, which has helped make socks cool again as everyone from skateboarders, hip-hop artists, pro athletes and entertainers have promoted the label.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re excited to tell our brand story in a bigger way,” said Candy Harris, chief marketing officer, speaking of its new—and first-ever—advertising campaign, called “Uncover the Uncommon.”
The campaign, which is being unveiled this fall, aims to bring the stories of its brand ambassadors, which it dubs as punks and poets, together in a way that also highlights its history of “uncovering the potential of an overlooked basics category—socks.”
The campaign will include the company’s first television ads, along with print, online and other methods of distribution.
Ambassadors in the million-dollar ad campaign include singer Rihanna, surfer Filipe Toledo and golfer Bubba Watson.
Along with a more prominent advertising presence, local shoppers now don’t have to go far to check out the company’s goods in person.
Its first OC store opened last month at the Irvine Spectrum Center, part of Newport Beach-based property’s owner Irvine Co.’s $200 million renovation and expansion for the 1.2 million-square-foot outdoor mall.
The store’s been one of the more popular new additions to the mall, in terms of customer traffic.
Like any good sock maker, the retail expansion has come as a pair; last month it also opened a store in San Diego, its ninth overall.
Its other stores include spots in outlet malls and out-of-state locations.
“Now, you’re not dependent on social media to know about the brand,” Harris said. “We’re in locations where people are coming and discovering the brand for the first time.”
“It’s a new avenue for us to bring more brand fans.”
Stance hopes to open its first international shop in Europe next year. Its European headquarters is outside London and houses a team of 21.
It employs about 150 people in its San Clemente headquarters, a three-building cluster of industrial buildings that includes a number of nontraditional employee amenities, like a full-time chef and director of wellness, basketball court—used by Dwayne Wade last month to host a clinic for NBA players— and volleyball court.
The firm doesn’t disclose its sales figures; Business Journal estimates Stance’s sales in the $150 million or more range, and that its recent growth would likely place it among the top companies on this week’s listing of fast-growing private companies.
While Stance’s popularity has thus-far grown organically, the company has now reached a size that demands a unified brand message, Harris said.
VCs and MVPs
Stance was launched in 2009 and co-founded by Chief Executive Jeff Kearl, Chief Revenue Officer John Wilson, Chief Creative Officer Aaron Hennings, Chief Product Officer Taylor Shupe and Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Kingman.
It soon turned the hosiery category inside out thanks to the stylish fit of its socks and a lengthy list of celebrity endorsers; notable influencers include rapper/mogul Jay-Z, actor Will Smith and numerous NBA players, who helped build brand awareness for Stance when it was in its early years.
It got its start making high-performance socks made of a proprietary fabric called Butter Blend, which includes a fiber made from the milk protein in casein.
Prices for its socks start at $10 going up to $280 for a Star Wars collector’s box set of a dozen.
Stance also quickly drew interest from Silicon Valley, raising more than $116 million from firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital and Shasta Ventures.
In 2015, it launched men’s underwear with prices ranging from $20 to $36, tapping Houston Rockets basketball star James Harden, last year’s MVP, to be its brand ambassador.
The label spent the last two years developing its women’s intimate line, which debuted last year with amputee model and activist Lauren Wasser serving as the face of the line. It retails from $16 to $90.
This summer it announced a new line of products, men’s and women’s T-shirts. Prices range from $30 to $100.
Along with its growing base of Stance stores, its products are sold in more than 60 countries and carried online, in and through wholesale partners like Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Foot Locker and other retailers.
Wilson said its three sales channels have been performing well, adding that its retail shops are proving to be more than profitable for the brand.
James Dion, founder and president of Chicago-based retail consulting firm Dionco Inc., said it’s rare to see an upstart firm with the kind of vision and execution that Stance has shown.
“The brand is young, fresh and most importantly, fun and affordable,” Dion said. “They may be using retail as a brand portal and that’s just smart because I would expect that they can get some very good deals on real estate as other stores close.”
“There is still and will continue to be tons of traffic in Class A malls and as their product is highly impulsive I would expect that they would do very well,” Dion said.
Best Threads
Data gleaned from its sales online, wholesale partners and its brick-and-mortar stores have given the company a good snapshot of its user—and it’s different from what you’d expect, according to Senior Vice President of Marketing Noelle Bates.
“Our consumer base is broader than [people] think,” she said. “You tend to think of us as a Southern California brand, young, male but you go in the store and you’ve got people from all different walks of life coming in who are excited about the brand.”
Wilson said that while its new ambassadors will help bring the Stance name to life and should also excite shoppers, it’s a tricky proposition bringing their different stories under one banner since its products are either categorized as a performance or lifestyle brand.
“Most of the storytelling that we’ve put out over the years has been to our partnerships—the NBA, our collaboration with artist Kevin Lyons or the collaboration with surf brand Captain Fin Co. or what we’re doing with Rihanna,” he said.
“The spirit of the brand has come to life, but they’ve been one-off interpretations. We realized that the bigger we become and the more we want to do in the marketplace means we need to really bring all that together into one campaign that really articulates the essence of who we are and what we’re up to.”
Harris added that it was important to make its print campaign more than just a photo with a tagline; so it brought on Mexican artist Victoria Villasana and Berlin-based Chilean artist Jose Rosmissi to create live thread art, which will be displayed in select stores.
The artwork consists of 11 portraits of its ambassadors such as Harden, professional climber Jimmy Chen and former professional runner Lauren Fleshman that includes imagery of a piece of Stance product they wear.
The images will also be shared online and in print.
In addition to TV spots and social media, the company’s considering running ads on billboards and other out-of-home locations.
Stance developed the campaign in-house and partnered with Portland-based Kamp Grizzly on video production. Harris added that it’ll run through 2019.
“We never seem to be short on ideas,” Harris said. “It’s probably our biggest problem.”
