Meet Ian Peterson | Sock Maker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ian Peterson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ian, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Gary (the other owner) & I have been long-time friends. We had both had successful businesses that we had individually founded. Gary is in hydraulics products and I have a printing company. We both felt that while it’s nice to have income, it wasn’t necessarily fulfilling as a career. My printing company had sold to a fulfillment/3PL company, which opened my eyes to a lot more ecommerce based businesses. I was still in the B2B arena, but seeing the vigor that a lot of the ecommerce entrepreneurs operated with left a very lasting impression. Fast forward a few years down the line and we’re both tossing around different business ideas. It seemed like everyone had a successful ecommerce business, so why shouldn’t we, right? We looked at t-shirts, subscription boxes and greeting cards. While they all had an appeal, the thing that real stuck was cycling socks. The marketplace seemed open for a company that focused on high quality and simple, but interesting design. I was attracted to the tight audience target and Gary, being an avid cyclist, knew the marketplace very well. So we began with no real knowledge in sock manufacturing and took our time to figure out best practices and really vetting manufacturers to ensure that the quality was up to our expectation. Once we launched and found our first customers, we knew we had something special, as the customer feedback has been fantastic since we started.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I wouldn’t have ever called myself entrepreneurial – more so, unconventional. When I was 15, I started copy-editing a local music magazine (back when newsprint magazines were still a thing). I quickly became an integral part of the operation for the magazine, met and interviewed a lot of punk and hardcore bands in the mid-90’s and learned that you don’t have to work for other people; sometimes you can create the things that you want to do. From there, I started a printing company with two friends, while I was in college. Unknowingly, it was an avoidance of getting a real job and again, building something that I had more control over. I wouldn’t say that it was easy, but the reward of being in control of my successes and failures made the failures a lot easier to overcome. Bootstrapping a small business with no real training or understanding of what I was doing did train me to become very horizontally oriented, where I can catch up to speed on administrative, operational, marketing, low-level and high-level positions within an organization. This has made it a lot easier to overcome the challenges that we encounter as an ecommerce start-up. Knowing that persistence and grit, plus a willingness to work beyond the obstacles that arise have really been the key to the growth of Godspeed Socks.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Being based in Salt Lake, there are plenty of opportunities to find a good time. I’d likely first take them to a local professional wrestling event (Dive Wrestling in Northern Utah is a great time). We have quite a few music venues for local and touring acts. We’d lean more to the heavy metal, punk and hardcore shows, so that would be The Beehive, Aces High, Metro Bar, The International or Urban Lounge, depending on what acts were playing. And obviously, there are plenty of great rides to bike along. We have a wonderful set of bike paths through the city, so I’d likely do an e-bike tour with them, as my best friends aren’t the best on road bikes. haha

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’ve been fortunate to have had exposure to a lot of great minds throughout my career. While I can credit a lot of them for providing guidance during certain legs of my journey, my mother was quite influential in helping me take the first step in starting Godspeed Socks. She had been a physical therapist/researcher at state university for 30+ years. In the course of her research, she worked with a team that developed a software to help streamline the process of receiving state-assistance (i.e. SNAP, Medicaid, etc.). The university helped her privatize the software and offered an early retirement package, so that she could pursue starting her first business – just a few years away from retirement. Over the course of a few years, she was able to grow and sell the company. I was fortunate to serve on the board and received a vast education from the other members and team that she assembled. It really helped me understand business from a different level, but more so provided the lessons that a career pivot at any stage is possible.

Website: https://www.godspeedsocks.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/godspeedsocks

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iantpeterson/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/godspeedsocks