With their colourful and quirky designs, it’s no wonder socks brand Happy Socks is a global phenomenon.
Whether you are dressing for the office, the gym, a night out or the beach, it’s highly likely you will be wearing a pair of socks.
From the beginning, the global founders of the Swedish brand, Viktor Tell and Mikael Soderlindh, wanted to create a brand that would spread and inspire happiness throughout the world.
They were recently in Cape Town to launch their “Local Hero” special edition, their biggest collaboration so far, where they worked with creatives, bloggers and artists from 15 countries to design socks inspired by their work.
“After eight years in the business, we are now sold in 90 countries worldwide, and with this collaboration, we really wanted to express our gratitude,” says Tell, Happy Socks creative director.
“We enjoy every country that we visit and we see the creative expressions all around, and we wanted to take that into Happy Socks because our company is not only based in Stockholm, but we are a global thing,” says Tell.
“We wanted to see what the local creatives could do with our blank canvas of cotton socks. We gave them carte blanche to create whatever they wanted. That is what we have always done with international collaborations; he says.
South African graffiti artist Falko One was the chosen local hero.
Soderlindh and Tell are long-time friends who worked together before starting the business. “We are a bit of a ying and a yang, which is part of our success. Soderlindh is the driving force of the business, while I am more of the driving force of the creative side.
“We came up with the business because we enjoyed wearing socks and we saw that no one gave love to the accessory no one really focused on it. What was available at the market at the time was mostly cheap socks with poor designs,” says Tell.
Soderlindh adds: “Tell has a huge ability when it comes to designs and patterns and working with illustrations. I think that the big difference with Happy Socks is how we put colour together, and that has been one secret of our success. Our designs always stand out in the socks department. A couple of years back we had booming competitors, but now we beat them when it comes to really strong designs,” he says.
The brand have now added underwear to their range - colourful briefs for men and women.
“”We felt that we wanted to spread happiness and design from our socks, so why not underwear as well? It was a natural development of our brand socks and underwear go well together,” says Tell.
“The name ‘Happy Socks’ is self-explanatory, we want you to be happy when you wear Happy Socks. We want to brighten up your day almost every morning. When you put on our underwear and socks, we want the moment to feel good and make you stay with a smile on your face for the rest of your day,
“I am still so impressed when we travel the world and I see a person wearing our socks, it’s really crazy. Whether we are in Tokyo, Cape Town or New York, whenever we see someone walking down the street wearing Happy Socks, it’s a fun and proud moment,” Tell says.
The Happy Socks customer is hard to put in a box, “Our customer is either a 25-year-old fashionista, a businessman, it’s a grandma buying presents for her grandkids, it’s a teenager. It’s such a wide variety of people and we would rather say that our target group is a colourful person who loves design,” says Soderlindh.
“South Africa is a very colourful country and we think that is why Happy Socks is relatively successful here. We’re not going to tell anyone what colour or design to wear you need to find your own way of wearing our socks
in the designs that catches your eye,” Soderlindh adds.