As a buyer in Australia, my job involved working out what the increasingly fickle teenage market wanted to wear, and getting it to the market as quickly and cheaply as possible before they changed their minds. An exciting job, lots of travel, I loved it. Until market pressure driving prices down, had us chasing cheaper labour markets to buy cheaper goods, led me to make my first visit to Bangladesh. As a buyer you often walk through the factories. In China you get cheeky grins, the workers often checking out what you are wearing and it’s pretty easy to see if they approve!

In Bangladesh, however the sadness, exhaustion and resignation in the eyes of the workers was both confronting and breathtaking. It was clear they were not working in a happy safe and nurturing environment. No amount of fresh paint can hide what is in someone’s eyes.

Suddenly I found myself questioning these decisions to source cheaper products, all in the name of profit unable to turn a blind eye to what I was seeing.

At the same time, a friend of mine, who worked in Real Estate, spending all day on his feet, bemoaned the fact it was really hard to find great quality black socks.  So I decided to take a look. You can buy socks in supermarkets, department stores, even pharmacies. Often they are sold in multiples, most are made from cotton, or synthetic fibres, and often they are quite thin, so there seemed to be a lot of choice, but he was probably right, they seemed more value and convenience driven versus comfort and durability.

So then I thought about the main issues people confront when buying socks:

• Sweat and foot odour.
• Comfort
• Durability
• Tightness around the calf area.

Then I set about researching alternative fibres, focussing firstly on comfort, looking for something really soft. I stumbled across bamboo. I had never really worked with it before, so was learning about it’s superior properties for the first time. In fibre form, it is soft, often likened to silk.

As a natural fibre it “wicks” a process, which draws moisture away from the skin leaving wearer cool and dry. Best of all, a naturally occurring antibacterial agent, survives the process of transforming the pulp into fibre form, and suppresses foot odour. Most intriguing and surprising of all, was it’s environmental credentials when compared to cotton.

At the same time, I was becoming a sock bore, quizzing friends on what this sock should look like. Re-enforcing the sole for extra comfort & hand linking the toe for extra strength, adding ergonomic rib trim to aid circulation around the calf were common requests.

I worked with a local company and created my first range of socks, which launched under the brand name “justsox” – chosen because bamboo shouldn’t be a nice to have or a quirky selling feature. I wanted these sox to take on their cotton equivalents and stand on their own two feet as equals.