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blacksocks
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Is anything else interesting in your story? I find it fascinating. It’s great that you did this from Switzerland. It’s a very interesting angle that you figured out very early on in the history of the Internet. It’s wonderful to see that. Samy Liechti: I think I have a message to all new
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: In Switzerland, how do you market for your kind of offering? How much could you grow in Switzerland? Samy Liechti: In the socks segment, we now have 20% market share. With 20% market share, we can grow up to 30% to 35%, but we will never dominate the whole market. We started about
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Interesting. In 2005, you said you had the biggest growth year. What kind of numbers did you do? Samy Liechti: We had 75% growth. The reason was very simple. We had won an award for customer experience in the US. I remember we had a whole bunch of PR coverage all over the
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Were all these customers in Switzerland? Samy Liechti: We have different currencies and languages here. We were not prepared for payments outside Switzerland. We only had Swiss Francs. All of a sudden, we had our first German customers. Then we started the same for Germany. Little by little, we introduced other currencies and
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How did you get to these articles? Were you doing PR outreach to the press? Samy Liechti: We did a press release. At that time, we did that by fax. Then we put together a list of potential journalists. Then we had a little luck. By the time we launched, the Internet hype
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How did you do it? How did you launch? What did you do specifically? Samy Liechti: We knew that marketing will be very hard. We knew that a subscription business will only work if people like the quality of goods they receive. We knew that we wanted to build a brand, and we
Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 1)
Samy Liechti has built up a very nice subscription e-commerce business from Switzerland selling socks, underwear, and shorts. The company is 100% bootstrapped. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Samy Liechti: I’m Swiss and grew
1Mby1M Deal Radar 2010: Blacksocks, Zurich
Blacksocks is an e-commerce site that delivers high-end socks for men by “sockscription.” Customers can select the quantity and frequency to receive socks automatically or order individual pairs from a selection of five styles: calf-length business socks, business light (made from a lighter cotton), knee socks, sport socks, or cashmere socks. The company also carries
