Everyone knows the problem. You’re wearing ankle socks in your sneakers and before you know it they’re floating somewhere halfway down your foot. But no problem or there is a solution for it. So Eindhoven students developed an ankle sock that never slips down. Yet it took four years for their invention to go on sale. They had to apply for a patent, find investors and wait a very long time. The first socks should finally hit the market at the end of this month.
Niels Fickinger is co-founder of the Plan-B company. “It’s actually quite simple. We knew that the elastic waistband of underwear ensures that it does not slide down. Then we thought: what if we sew that elastic to a sock?”
Together with Jari van den Broek, Harris van Eijk and Willem Moeskops, Niels cut the elastic edge of a pair of underpants in 2019. They asked grandma if she could sew it to a sock. “We immediately saw that it looked good and more importantly, that the sock did not slip.” With that idea they won the title of Best Student Company in the Netherlands.
“So we had to wait a long time.”
“We then applied for a patent on the special way in which we sew the elastic to the sock,” explains Niels. “As a result, we were unable to market the socks for years. That is only allowed after the patent has been issued. So we had to wait a long time.”
In between, the boys were able to continue working on the production process. “Underpants are made in the underpants factory and socks in the sock factory. In the end, we chose a producer who gets the elastics from the underpants factory and sews them onto the socks.” According to the method patented by Plan-B.
“We don’t want those crazy figures like bananas on it or something.”
The boys also wanted to market multiple colors of socks. “You can get a new pair of socks from us every month. Sometimes the band has the same color as the sock, sometimes it differs. We don’t want crazy figures like bananas or something.”
An investor saw something in the plan and the boys gave him a pair of socks to take home. “His children didn’t want to wear anything else,” says Niels with a laugh. “They convinced their father to work with our company. The socks will officially go into production at the end of this month. The first orders will be delivered a few days later.”
“We did receive many compliments on the idea from Adidas and Nike, for example.”
For the time being, the socks are only for sale in the Netherlands. “We want to sell a license to clothing brands to make our socks with their logo, but we haven’t got that far yet. We did receive a lot of compliments on the idea from Adidas and Nike, for example.”
Of course the four boys keep on dreaming. “We are very proud of what we have achieved and hope that the socks will be worn a lot. We hope that we will also sell abroad in the future.”
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