Swimrun Socks: It All Started From Our Parents Garage. The Gococo Story.
Gococo is a family run business in Sweden, established in 2010 and now the market leaders in swimrun socks. We sat down with co-founder Annie Wennergren who runs the business with her sister Linnéa to hear the Gococo story.
Humble Beginnings
Annie’s mum who has a background in textiles started the company in 2010, she was originally looking at socks for medical uses. The family ordered in several thousands pairs of socks and they turned up in our home in Sweden, Annie was in London at the time and came back to a hallway full of socks!
The early days of Gococo were atypical of a bootstrapped startup. Run from a warehouse of a parents garage, with the attic as the back-up storage area. The family were running between the garage and the attic fulfilling orders and selling hard.
Annie gave a wry smile ‘the first socks were rubbish!’ before going onto say ‘the sizing was really off, they were very thick and it was hard to sell them’. But the family had to sell them in order to bring money back into the business.
Technology Partnership
A key part of Gococo’s success has been their partnership with 37.5 technology, then also a small company but now well known in the endurance sports world.
It might sound odd using the word ‘technology’ when talking about clothing, but a lot of R&D has gone into making these performance socks.
37.5 keeps the body at the ideal temperature by cretaing a microclimate between the skin and fabric. Active particles regulate your body temperature; if you are too hot or too cold. More about 37.5 Technology here.
Gococo Socks and Swimrun
It is little surprise that Gococo struck an instant chord with swimrun. A passionate and supportive community, looking out for each other. Gococo became partners with the ÖTILLÖ race in the early years, and that partnership have flourished ever since. The socks have also improved significantly since those early days!
Plans for the future
Gococo are well known in the swimrun community and in Sweden, and are entering an exciting new expansion phase. With distribution to continental Europe, the UK and the USA next on the agenda. You can read more about swimrun socks here.
