The folks at Freaker USA have had their socks knocked off by the support they received for their new venture, Freaker Feet.
Now, at the wrap of a wildly successful–and admittedly ambitious–Kickstarter campaign, they’re ready to put their socks on shelves around the globe.
“We’re moving forward immediately. We’re starting now,” Lauren Krakauskas with Freaker USA said Tuesday, just an hour after the company exceeded its Kickstarter campaign goal.
Owner Zach Crain kicked off a Kickstarter campaign for Freaker Feet on Jan. 1, with the hope of raising $250,000 for production of 127 styles of socks, which will all be completely designed, manufactured and packaged here in North Carolina.
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When the countdown clock struck zero at 10 a.m. today, Freaker Feet had garnered $255,264 from nearly 5,000 backers. A serious surge right at the end–$100,000 in the last 24 hours, Krakauskas said–helped put the company over its mark.
While they’re thrilled by the outpouring of contributions, Krakauskas said the last couple of days have been nail-biters, to say the least.
“As a general rule we are pretty optimistic people but we were getting nervous. Zach kept saying his armpits were going to fall off,” she said, laughing. “He would say, ‘My armpits are getting sweaty; they’re going to fall off.'”
But judging by the flow of Freaker USA’s first Kickstarter campaign in 2011, which helped launch the company’s zany brand of knitted beverage insulators, Krakauskas said they remained hopeful.
“It’s not atypical for Kickstarter campaigns to happen this way. There is usually a big push at the beginning and a huge push at the end. We looked at the graph of our first Kickstarter and it kind of looked exactly the same as this one did, actually. So that gave us hope throughout the whole thing. But you still get the jitters a little bit,” she said.
Having met the goal, Krakauskas said the company is eager to get going on Freaker Feet, which include collegiate-themed styles, as well as state flags and “boutique” pairs offering up Freaker’s tongue-in-cheek humor. Sock designs can still be viewed on Freaker Feet’s Kickstarter page.
Since all production is kept local–a component that Crain found essential to Freaker Feet–Krakauskas said manufacturing won’t take nearly as long as it would if it were outsourced overseas.
“We’re shooting for May for Kickstarter. The Kickstarter backers will be the first to get their packages because they are the ones who made it possible,” she noted.
The socks will retail at $16 a pair, and will be available online and locally at Edge of Urge in downtown Wilmington.
Hilary Snow is a reporter at Port City Daily. Reach her at (910) 772-6341 or hilary.s@hometownwilmington.com.
