Bombas
When Randy Goldberg and David Heath learned that socks were the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters back in 2011, they knew they could help. Two years later, when the duo officially launched their clothing company, Bombas, they did so with a goal: for each pair of socks that the company sold, a pair would be donated to people experiencing homelessness across the U.S. The brand has even expanded that campaign to also include T-shirts in 2019 and underwear in early 2021.
“We knew that in order to donate a lot of socks, we d have to sell a lot of socks, and to do that, we d have to create something better than anything else on the market,” Goldberg, Bombas s co-founder and chief brand officer, tells Mental Floss in an email. Eight years later, the company has been able to donate over 45 million items to homeless shelters through their network of over 3000 Giving Partners that include shelters and community organizations across all 50 states. “It s incredibly
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Retailers and brands have ushered in Black History Month 2021 with an unprecedented barrage of announcements that address systemic racism within their own businesses, welcome Black entrepreneurs and employees to their ranks, and get Black-owned brands onto their shelves.
Following the killing of George Floyd last summer and a stream of other reports of police brutality, along with the fresh attention in 2020 on several high-profile incidents of racial injustice, there appears to be a moral consensus among retailers that ingrained racial inequities must be addressed, according to Jade Sykes, president of Diversify Retail, a nonprofit that advises
BlPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) brands on working with retailers.