Sydney Sock Project partners with charities to create a positive social impact to disadvantaged communities in the areas of homelessness, mental health, education, animal welfare, and much more. Sydney Sock Project sponsors three schools onto the Books in Homes primary program.

Sydney Sock Project Co-Founder and CEO Andres Herrero chats with Books in Homes Communications Coordinator Julie Ditrich about all things socks and books for kids plus bin chickens, bush turkeys, koalas, cockatoos and more in this new interview series.

Where did the idea of Sydney Sock Project come from?

I was studying Environmental Engineering at Wollongong University and was in my last year–fourth year–writing my thesis. I wanted to do something on the side in the social enterprise space because the thesis was quite boring and wasn’t consuming that much of my time.

I read somewhere that one of the most requested items in homeless shelters was socks. And that’s when my brain just went, cool, let’s see if other brands in Australia are doing something similar, where they’re selling socks and donating, and it turned out there just weren’t any brands doing it. So, that’s when the idea sparked.

My friend Blake Kelly who was in a sales position at Mainfreight and I used to train at a gym together. We became mates and had a common interest in business and entrepreneurship. We decided to form a partnership and kick off the sock business.

We brought some socks and started selling them at Bondi markets in Sydney. Sundays consisted of Blake selling them one week, and mum and me selling them the other week. We’d pack the car boot full of socks, a couple of chairs, a couple of tables and a gazebo, and head down to the markets and hustle. We had a big sign that said: “Buy one pair and we’ll donate a pair”. So, whatever we would sell, say 100 pairs, we’d then take another 100 pairs to the Reverend Bill Crews Foundation in Ashfield in Sydney.

It kept my mum and me busy on Sundays and gave us something to bond over as we shared a day together. At that point, I was not even thinking this could be a career. It was just a bit of fun. I got a big kick out of the classic business concept of purchasing something for a certain price, selling it for another, and then having a social process in the middle of donating a pair.

And that’s how the Sydney Sock Project was founded.

Early days at the markets.

Our initial sock stock.

There are two things I want to just go back to. The impetus of the idea was about discovering homeless people didn’t have access to socks. That would suggest to me there’s a part of you that was oriented towards helping people, towards altruism, or paying it forward and doing good in the world. Would that be an accurate description?

Absolutely. When I was in my second year of Uni, I went on an internship to India to work on a water resources study, and that was the first time I’d ever heard of a social enterprise. I essentially paid a fee to go on this study program that would in turn help an Indian-based community have clean water. That just surprised me. I’m like, whoah, there’s a business concept out there where people can be for profit but have a huge impact on the community. And that just stuck with me. I remember meeting the founder of this business and thinking, well, this guy’s ultra successful, yet he’s also sending thousands of kids and students to these developing nations, building school programs, helping Indian women start businesses… It was a wow moment. This was really cool. But then here I was, broke in Uni, barely making money, thinking, I want to replicate this dude’s awesome business model, and I’ve got no funds. So, I needed a low-cost barrier entry. Luckily, I’d read the quote about homeless shelters requiring socks. I’m like, perfect, that’s the gap. I can feel that. That void can be filled. We just have to sell some socks.

How did you come up with the ideas for the first designs for your socks?

I must be honest… they weren’t our designs. We just bought premade socks from an overseas manufacturer. We needed to validate this idea in the most cost-effective way. So, it was, okay, let’s bring over a few hundred pairs only, which probably cost me less than a thousand bucks. Then test the idea…

Sell them at Bondi markets.

Cool.

People are really into socks.

People love the idea of giving back.

Awesome.

Validated, proved, tick.

Then later I thought, let’s go back and figure out how we can customise these socks. I started talking to manufacturers and saying, hey, look, if we send you some designs, can you put them into production? And that’s when the model expanded a bit more. I was like, cool. Now we’ve got our own sock line.

Who designed the socks?
Me, very badly. A lot of the initial designs are just not part of the collection anymore. I don’t come from a design background. I still don’t consider myself an epic designer. I outsource all that now. I’ve got a designer, Karmen, who helps now. She’s awesome. It was just a matter of playing with Adobe Illustrator and all these new tools that I’d never used before. I was still in my final year of engineering, so the workload was hectic, and I was figuring out how to design socks on the side. Trying to get something to work. We submitted 12 different designs for the first order. That’s how we started.

What about the name Sydney Sock Project? How did that come into being?

It was a matter of who hadn’t already taken a name we wanted. And there were a lot of sock-related names out there that were already unavailable. We wanted to have something that reflected we were a social initiative and giving back. “Project” was the impact word that reflected we were bigger than a business that just sell socks.

We had that business name, domain name, Instagram handle. You’ve got to check all these things before you start a brand these days. It was also SEO friendly. So, if people searched it, it would probably be likely to be up top. We were not competing with any big companies that have a Google presence. The name is irrelevant, really, because once you create a brand and people just hear the name enough then it just connects with what you sell and who you are.

And the values and feeling of your brand…

Absolutely. People now think of us as the Sock Project or Sydney Socks. It just represents us, and what we stand for in the market. We have a pretty good position now in Australia as the sock brand that does good.

“The sock brand that does good” … that’s a great tagline. Okay, so, what’s been your business trajectory between the startup phase and where you are now? By business I mean the mental and psychological side, as well as the numbers…

It was 2019, I’d just finished my degree, and I scored an internship at an engineering firm that at the time seemed like a great place to work because it was a wastewater engineering firm, which is what my thesis was about. My head was saying…  I’m going to develop a career in engineering. This is where my life is going, this is what I’m passionate about. I’m just a fresh graduate, seeking jobs and I’ve got this internship. Epic. So, I started working for three months.

The Sydney Sock Project got put on the backburner, as it was bleeding capital. We were doing one market a month just to maintain, just to kind of pay off the Shopify subscription and try to move some of the stock we had. About three months into my internship, the company offered me a full-time position and about one month into that, I kind of got a rude awakening that this was not where I wanted to be, and not the career I wanted to pursue.

I’ve always had a strong passion for business, for social enterprise, for creating something that was going to be bigger than me. And being stuck under LED lights in the office was possibly the most depressing thing I’ve ever had to endure in my life. It sounds extreme, but that’s how I was feeling.

It’s not, I understand completely. It can be absolutely soul-destroying.

It is. Then I would leave work and all I could think about was doing things greater than that job. And it wasn’t the company’s fault, it was purely that I had no aspirations to occupy the management roles in the company. I respected the team as colleagues and as friends, but there was nothing about getting to a director’s position in that firm that resonated with me. So, I was like, okay, that doesn’t work.

I was out at dinner one night with my family, and mum and dad told me to just quit. And I was like, what? Really? And they were like, yeah, just quit. I kind of felt I was working for them.

And they said, why? No one’s holding you back. And then, I quit. I flew to Spain, and I walked the Camino de Santiago, which is a pilgrimage through Spain, France, and Portugal. I ended up walking over 900 kilometres over a period of 40 days. It was an amazing journey. I was at this crossroads in life.

Early on in that walk, I made a strong-minded decision that I never wanted to work for someone ever again. I’m never going to walk back into an office. I’m going to work on something for myself and really make it.

Andres Herrero on the Camino de Santiago trek through Spain, France, and Portugal.

The walk provided you with great clarity.

Yes, this decision gave me the fuel to push, and I ended up burning all my bridges in the engineering world.

In the interim, Blake was already fortunate to be in a great position at Mainfreight and was climbing the corporate ladder and succeeding professionally. We realised we were going in different directions. I wanted to take a leap of faith and make Sydney Sock Project full time and Blake wanted to focus on his corporate career, so we made a mutual decision to part ways. We agreed on terms, and I bought out his share of the business. Then I restructured it from a partnership to a company. Blake and I are still great mates, and we train together and love talking about business.

I scored a nighttime job at a nursing home between three and seven every day. I would work every day, except for Sundays because I was at the markets. I did four-hour shifts, which gave me the whole morning to work on the business. The four hours supplemented the business’s costs. That was early 2020. And that was when the trajectory changed. It went from being a kind of business for the sake of doing business to this is going to be my livelihood. This is going to be what I’m going to build. This is going to supplement my travel and everything I’ve dreamed of. It was a two-year slog between 2020 and 2022, where there was a lot of testing, a lot of learning, a lot of YouTube videos at night on how to run businesses, how to create content, how to run ads. I had no one in front of me. I had no mentor. I had no one to hold my hand and guide me through this business path. I was just kind of winging it.

And in 2022, I met Jay Wright, who owns the E-Commerce Equation, who coaches e-commerce brands to become insanely profitable and big and next level. That’s when it really blew up. We went from doing 400K in 2022 to $1.5 million in 2023 to $3 million in 2024. And hopefully $6.5 million in 2025.

Wow! How do you feel?

Great, fantastic. It’s been such an incredible journey. I’m very grateful for the people I’ve met that have guided me and that have trusted the brand. And I think about what people say… the first million dollars is the hardest, it’s so true. Getting to that point was so, so, so tricky and now generating revenue and acquiring customers has become our bread and butter. It’s just a matter of how do we keep relevant? How do we continue scaling? How do we release new products that people like?

The challenges have changed. It’s team-based now. It’s like, who do we hire? How do we expand? How do we get a bigger warehouse? We need more space. We need faster pick-packers. We need someone that’s going to help with content. We need to manage cashflow. We need to invest in machinery, whatever it is. The challenges have changed.

Acquiring new warehouse space.

Fulfilling orders.

How are you feeling about where you are now?

I’ve barely had time to reflect, honestly. It all happened so fast. I’m so caught up in the day-to-day of it all that I think going to China four weeks ago, was the first point in time where I could really quieten down the noise and reflect.

And it was a beautiful experience. It was the first time I’ve had the chance to be silent. Because no one speaks English in China. I was in the mountains, sipping tea. And that was a really beautiful moment. It was also a moment where I reflected on the past and started reigniting my next fire for the future. Because at the end of last year, my target was $3 million, and we hit it.

It’s daunting to think I can do anything more than that. Because 2024 was really hard. I didn’t even believe that we could hit it, but we did. And then now we’ve got to start figuring out the numbers for 2025. Come on, we can’t slow down. Shut up and get to work. So, yeah, I value the moments of reflecting. I should do it more.

I don’t do it often but I’m feeling proud. I’m feeling like we can genuinely make an impact for the charities we support. I never had that feeling at the start. When you’re generating a couple of thousand bucks a year for charities, you think it will go to admin fees. But now it’s like, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for several charities, which puts us in the upper echelon of corporate donations. And we’re a small business. We’re not a billion-dollar company.

So, that was a really cool insight. Having conversations with charities like yourself and the impact that we can have… that’s epic. Really cool. And we’re on track to donate a million dollars by the end of this year. I really hope we can hit it. That would be a massive milestone.

From my point-of-view, it’s just extraordinary. I get excited no matter what the donation figure is, whether it was right at the beginning of our partnership with you or now. I was always excited to keep translating those figures… that’s X many kids on the Book in Homes primary program. That’s X or Y many new books for kids this particular period. All those contributions are having a real impact.

You were mentioning about the moments of quiet reflection. What do you need to do for yourself on a daily, weekly, monthly basis or yearly basis to keep yourself balanced?

After that China trip, I decided that every year I’ll do a solo silent retreat where I’ll just go inwards. A trip completely independent of family, friends and people I know in a country that’s very foreign, which combines (A) the reason I do this, which is my passion for travel and freedom, and (B) time for reflection.

It’s crazy what 20 minutes of silence can do. And I just don’t get that in my world, because I’m sitting here working. I’m talking about like looking out a window at a mountain for more than 20 minutes without a phone, without a laptop, or sipping a tea or eating something and just seeing the magnitude of the earth and just how small we are.

That’s definitely something I require. But as I mentioned, I’m in a stage now where I’m grinding harder than I ever have, because I know that the work we’re putting in now, the input is not relative to the output. Like one input is worth three output at this scale, because it’s rolling so fast that I just need to keep pushing. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Do you feel sometimes it’s a runaway train? And have you got the ability to put on the brakes or do you want to stay on the train at this speed and momentum?

I like to definitely keep up. I never want to put on the brakes. I feel that when an opportunity presents itself in business, that the last thing you want to do is put on the brakes. Heinemann, the duty-free stores in Australian airports, have also been huge for us.

I also don’t want to get to a point where I’m 35 and reflect on this period and realise I’ve missed out on a lot. So, I’m trying to find the balance in working this hard, and also treating myself every couple of weeks or months with trips. I’m flying to Europe again in May and in July.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still waking up at six in the morning every day when I’m on these trips and working and joining meetings and being present. There’s no such thing as fully letting go… a letting-my-hair-down sort of holiday. But at least I’m working from a city I love, seeing friends from Uni over in Spain, and experiencing precious moments like that, which I value a lot. And it’s great now because when I started this business, it was all about making enough money to supplement my life.

And now it’s getting to a point where it’s like, cool, the business is bringing in enough profit to satisfy my life and I’m keeping up with the business.

I’m just so obsessed with it. I’m addicted to it. I’m so in love with it.

What a great place to be.

I don’t want to slow down. I’ll keep pushing so I can retire my parents early and they can start living a life they deserve because they’re migrants. They can also come and work in the business if they want to. They help me. I trust them. So, that’s the plan for the next 12 months. Mum and dad. They have good jobs they’re comfortable in, but I’d like them to retire and come help on a part-time basis, and supplement their life through income.

That’s great. Not a lot of people understand the bond between European families, the real connection.

Oh, absolutely. They’re part of this business now. They don’t ask for a handout. They’re just here every single day when they can, helping out.

How did you find out about Books in Homes, Andres?

When I started the Sydney Sock Project with my friend Blake, he worked at Mainfreight in Banksmeadow where Books in Homes occupied an office. We decided to expand from giving back to the homeless to giving customers the option to donate to other charities.

We brought on Books in Homes and R U OK? and then we changed the business model so that when you purchase a pair of socks, you have the freedom to choose the social cause. We found that customers weren’t doing that on our website. When people were checking out, they were skipping the option altogether and defaulting to the button we’d selected for the charity.

So, we thought, okay, we need to change the model again and have collection-based partnerships. We now have a collection that supports Books in Homes, a collection that supports WIRES, a collection that supports Safe Space, and several other charities.

Your major charity themes appear to be education, animal welfare, and cancer research?

Yes. I would put Books in Homes under the category of education and targeting low socio-economic communities, Indigenous communities, and STEM research.

You’re giving kids an opportunity to access books and to self-actualise.

Exactly right. We can help with improving literacy levels, because when you showed me the statistics of early literacy levels in rural and outback communities, it was shocking compared to what we have here in Sydney. It felt like supplying books is a clear answer to an issue that’s so prevalent in our society.

So, let’s get books into these schools, let’s get to these people, let’s get these kids passionate about education, get them keen to go to university to get careers and to break that cycle.

When it came to the primary program, what was your motivation for sponsoring your first primary school?

I remember you sending me a spreadsheet of all the NSW regional schools that needed sponsorship, which was in a way devastating because we were talking about our first sponsorship being for 13 kids. We still have that spreadsheet that still has thousands of unsupported children who require educational supplies.

What we agreed on was let’s find the school that needed the program the most, which had a low ICSEA [Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage] ranking. Brungle Public School was a clear candidate, and we had the resources to sponsor this school entirely.

We didn’t want to be able to go 50-50 or pull out after one year. We wanted to confidently direct our donations into a school that we can supply books for years to come.

Can you let me know what was your criteria for choosing Brungle Public School? You partly answered that when you mentioned the ICSEA score, which is a really critical component of the Books in Homes school selection criteria. But was there anything else in that spreadsheet that made Brungle jump out at you?

I wanted a school that was close enough for me to visit. Having it in New South Wales within a five-hour driving distance was preferable because I wanted to be able to connect with the school community.

And as I mentioned previously, obviously, the number of students that matched up with our donation. There were a lot of schools that had hundreds of students, and it was just unaffordable for the business to sponsor the larger schools at the point in time.

The fact that I’ve been to Brungle Public School and met the staff and students, I see it at face value. When I speak to the principal and the teachers and they talk to me about the families and the issues they face outside of the school, it’s like, oh my God, this is just devastating and heartbreaking because at the school, the kids are so passionate to learn and read the books.

And when you see their faces, when you give them the books, I just love it. And then you hear stories about what’s happening on the home front…

One step forward and two steps back?

Yeah. I mean, are we solving this? Some of the parents don’t even let the students take the books back home with them. So, then the kids rely on the books being kept safe for them at the school.

Why would the parents not allow the books to come home?

Because they didn’t believe in reading. It was just devastating.

That situation doesn’t apply only to Brungle. We’ve heard stories like that from other areas as well, both in the city and in regional and remote areas too, and across all cultures.

Absolutely. The impact of attending our first Book Giving Assembly was tremendous and it made me ask: how can we sponsor more schools? How can we continue this impact? I believe we are succeeding in continuing that growth.

I do want to mention witnessing you having developed a special connection with Brungle Public School. And your mates, as well, having gone there and camped in the surrounds, and being shown some of the Indigenous artefacts and sacred areas and having that first-hand interaction with the school students and the teachers. It seems like a beautiful collective.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And reflecting on those visits, I want to have more time to go on these trips and to be present at the ceremonies. Because when I look at my calendar, I can’t squeeze in an overnight during the week.

It’s just impossible. And back then, it was just like, yeah, Brungle trip! Let’s go, boys! We’re going to stay two nights and camp. So, I do want to have that again. I want to be in the privileged position to be able to go back to the point where Sydney Sock Project was a much smaller business and when I still had the freedom to be able to go to the school and spend the night.

But now it’s, I’ve got warehouse staff to look after and payroll and all this stuff that I’m like, what?

Andres and the Sydney Sock Project team visit Brungle Public School.

And don’t forget the Taronga Zoo visit where you studied the critically endanged Corroboree Frog with the Brungle students.

Yeah. Absolutely. We have Corroboree Frog socks now.

Andres and the Brungalites visit Taronga Zoo.

Does Brungle Public School know about them?

I believe so. I’m waiting for the next visit because I’m going to give all the kids Corroboree Frog socks.

You have to go. Maybe in Term 2 in winter. As long as you’re not camping though.

The business couldn’t afford a hotel back then.

It was beautiful. The school was a great match for you and Sydney Sock Project.

Yeah. I remember having chats with you Just comparing then and now. Crazy. Right. We look upon Brungle as our golden star.

It’s a bit surreal to tell you the truth. You’re also now sponsoring Jervis Bay School and Preschool in the NSW South Coast and Euabalong West Public School, which is about seven hours away from Broken Hill.

What has been the benefit to you personally, as well as to Sydney Sock Project professionally of sponsoring the Books in Homes program at your schools?

For me on a personal level, it’s the amount I’ve learned from interacting with students and teachers. I went to a school where history wasn’t necessarily taught in the way it is now. So, going to Brungle and experiencing culture firsthand was really special. Being welcomed with open arms to a community that I’m completely foreign to was very special as well. The real benefits I gained was from that personal attachment to the school, to the teachers, to the community, to the children, and the same could be said by my mates who came with me.

We still talk about it to this day about how truly special those trips were and how we felt when we were received with so much warmth.

Just reflecting on the impact we’ve had, we’ve raised around $85,000 for Books in Homes since we started.

Wow!

On a personal level, that would have been hard to do but from a company’s… whether we make money or lose money, we commit to the donation.

Being able to say that we’ve raised that much money to help kids in need who come from bookless homes, just from a business standpoint, is great. It’s great for marketing. It’s great for the trust we have with our customers. It doesn’t just make us feel great, but it’s hundreds of thousands of customers who put on a pair of bin chicken socks or capybara socks or any other sock and tell the story again. It’s a story that just keeps on getting told and the socks have just become this kind of third party, like the middleman, in the conversation. You gift a pair of socks and you’re not talking about the bilby or bush turkey socks; you’re talking about the fact that this sock is sponsoring a school and providing educational resources.

So, every customer has an emotional stake in this enterprise?

Absolutely. It’s rare that you get to put on a piece of apparel or an accessory that has such a deep and impactful story to it and such an impactful history, which is why we have such a loyal fan base. And whether they know it or not, they’re also part of the journey in the immense amount of help they’ve been able to provide to communities, not just Books in Homes, but every other charity and cause we support.

How many designs have you got now?

Over a hundred. And we’ve got probably another thirty on the way. I’ve also got hats. And these are going to retail for $40, which means that the donations are now going to be $4 for every single sale of those.

Bush Turkey Socks.

That’s quite an accomplishment. From an outsider looking in, and from an outsider who is also a participant in the charity that you support, it’s quite overwhelming in a really beautiful way.

Absolutely.

If you’ve done this now, by the age of 29, imagine what you’ll do by the time you’re 35 or 45 or beyond.

I have no idea. I’m just kind of going year by year.

What’s the final takeaway you would like to give us about your entrepreneurial journey and how you see yourself and how Sydney Sock Project sees itself in terms of its commitment, not only to Books in Homes and to customer satisfaction, but also to the other wonderful charities you support? What’s the final takeaway at the age of 29? Because I’ll probably ask you this question again in the future.

I believe that businesses should do their due diligence and have a social model and to give back to charities. I’ve proven that I can build a company to $3 million in yearly revenue, donate $300,000 and still make a living for myself and have more than enough to keep going.

So, I’m a big advocate for making a start-up company a social enterprise. Don’t opt in some time down the track because of marketing tactics. Put a tax (so to speak) on your business that donates a percentage of proceeds, not profits, because there’s a huge difference between companies that say 1% of profits donated, because profits can be anything.

I can zero out my profits tomorrow and pay myself a million-dollar salary and buy a car and more. Donations have to be revenue generated. If I generate $100,000 of revenue, I owe it to society to donate 10% of that wealth. I got that figure from a book called Think and Grow Rich.

A very famous book by Napolean Hill.

Yeah, that always stuck with me. A lot of businesses approach us now and ask, how do we start this social enterprise model? I say, don’t overthink it. It’s something you can attach to your product, or you can just have a particular overarching theme of your brand that says, we give back to plant trees, we give back to coral reefs, we give back to education and then stick true to it.

Be consistent.

I’m a big advocate for it. I don’t think there are enough brands doing it. It can also improve conversion. Just from a purely analytical data-driven point of the backend of the business, you will improve your conversion rate if you’re telling your customers that their purchase is going to something good.

Because there’s nothing better as a gift-giver, in my instance, to say, here’s a bin chicken sock that also happens to help bring a book into a child’s life in New South Wales.

And something as simple as that can pretty much change the trajectory of this child’s future, their education, and families and generations to come. So, yeah, I’m a big fan of it and I think we’ve proven this model is effective.

Congratulations, Andres! It’s a huge accomplishment.

I don’t know all of the challenges and obstacles you’ve gone through in setting up your business, but I feel as though there’s a lot of passion behind it. There’s a lot of emotion. There’s also a lot of critical thinking and reasoning and strategy. It’s like two opposites of the human condition, logic and creativity coming together in a harmonious way. I can only imagine what will happen in the next few years.

I’m happy with where it’s come from. I remember in the early days being asked: how can you sell socks and make a living off it? It just seemed like a joke to some people. It was something I hadn’t proven to the world yet. Only I knew that I could get it to the next point.

Still, there were lots of doubters on the sidelines.

Did they challenge your ideas?

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, my goodness. That would have been the hardest thing to bear.

I was in a great position with a good paying stable job. And then I decided to sell socks at the markets.

There’s more to this. There are other life lessons here. The naysayers will try to talk you down from your vision, but it takes a lot of personal strength and perseverance and a very strong and committed attitude and a confident understanding of who you are and your own internal resources to just keep going and move in the direction you want to move.

The Camino helped with that. It simplified everything. It simplified a lot of my questions because prior to completing the walk, I had a ton of questions I thought needed answering and that life was difficult and all these decisions I needed to make were difficult. The walk simplified everything.

And it’s what gave me that kind of ‘let’s just give this a go and let’s make it work’ attitude. Let’s just work until it works. Put your head down and let’s just get to work because that’s the only thing stopping you between this business being successful or not.

I generally believe that success and a lack of success in business comes down to perseverance. Getting to the first bottleneck or the first roadblock and turning away because it seems too hard. Whereas I just fronted up to all those little challenges throughout the journey.

And that’s the hardest phase. That first, the zero to $30,000 per month in revenue is very tricky. You’re validating a product. You’re just kind of dabbling with customers. You’re not really a brand yet. You don’t really have an identity in the market. And that’s when you either come alive or you don’t.

You need to develop that resilience. It’s a big life lesson. You need that resilience just to keep going.

I genuinely believe that some people are cut out for it and some people aren’t. And you just kind of see that with people who turn back after the first roadblock versus the people that hammer through. There are two personalities. There are two types of people.

Doubt is the last thing you need when you’re trying to push through something extraordinary. I think that’s why we got to this point because at no position did I think this wasn’t going to work, even in the hardest times, even during COVID. Yeah. I’m like, this will work, this will work.

I was ignorant too. It was almost like ignorance is bliss moment of just always stepping up, even if it’s a micro step. So, if I sold 50 pairs last week, then this week I want to sell 60 pairs, and I’ll write it on my chalkboard or my whiteboard and I’ll count down every single pair.

And if I got to the end of the week and I’d sold 55, I’ll tell mom to call all her friends and say, hey, who needs a pair of socks? And I’ll make the 60. I’ll just made it work. And it’s just that mentality of always trying to level up from the previous day and the previous week and the previous year that just pushed me through all the moments.

Now I celebrate. I’d sell the 60 pairs at the end of the week and go, yeah, we got, we got to sell 60 pairs. Now that 60 pairs are what we sell in half an hour.

Cockatoo socks.

Toucans, owls, koalas, platypus socks, oh my!

Andres, every time I speak to you, I learn something new. And today’s been full of learning. So, thank you for the opportunity to number one, interview you for this story, but thank you also from a personal point of view, there are things you say that I need to hear.

 I also think the Camino is a metaphor for everything you went through with your business. And if you can keep trudging one step at a time over 900 kilometres and 40 days and reach the end, then you can work hard and make your business a success.

Yeah. Wow. That’s really, really cool, Julie. I haven’t really thought about it like that. Oh, that’s awesome.

I think we’ve found the central theme of your story.

I love that because I reflect on the Camino every single day. It was a moment in my life where I felt the most amount of freedom ever. And yeah, sometimes when I’m having a hard day, I think, hey, let’s just go back to that peaceful moment I was just walking for eight hours a day.

Let’s just think about that for the next half hour and maybe put on a little podcast or a song that I played during the Camino that really brings me back to that moment in time. Which I did today. It’s been a chill day because I shot social media content all day. It’s hectic. Afterwards I put on James Bay [an English singer and song-writer]. And then it was Zen in the office for a bit.

Is there anything that you think is important to tell me that I haven’t asked?

I think we’ve covered every aspect of the journey from financial, emotional, personal.

Spiritual?

I feel like I was more spiritual four years ago when I had more free time and go for walks in the bush. But I want to be able to do something here in the warehouse where I can shut the door and reflect and just kind of hit zero again and reset.

I think you’re already naturally tapped into that. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

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INTERVIEW CONDUCTED ON 25/03/25