Father's Day 2018: Google Doodle Honors Father-Son Innovators

Sunday is Father’s Day. As the case with most of these special days, there’s a Google Doodle celebrating the day, but for this year, the search engine is spotlighting a business started by a father and son.

John’s Crazy Socks is an online sock retailer started by Mark and John Cronin in fall 2016. When John, who has Down syndrome, was close to graduating from high school, he told his father, Mark, how he wanted to start a business with him. The first idea was a food truck, but that was not going to happen since neither of them knew how to cook. So instead, he wanted to sell socks, but not just any socks. John wanted to sell socks with creative, “crazy” designs, the ones that he loves wearing.

In the video from Google, Mark explains the rough beginnings for John’s Crazy Socks. When the store site went up, they received 452 orders in that first month. However, when orders stopped coming in, they had to let go of employees, something Mark said he would never let happen again.

The two then reassessed their strategy regarding the sock business. They began to get creative about reaching their customer base. With the new strategy, John’s Crazy Socks started receiving more and more orders.

Now, John’s Crazy Socks received 1,500-2,000 orders per day, which ship to 44 countries. Each order comes with a personal thank you note from John as well as some candy. From their earnings, 5 percent goes to the Special Olympics and other charities. The company also employees 35 people, 16 of whom have different capabilities.

It’s no secret that fathers play an important role in a child’s life. Not only are dads who are regularly involved in their lives of their children making a big change in their social development, but kids also take certain traits from their fathers.