Wrightsock

WRIGHTSOCK DIDN’T BECOME THE WRIGHTSOCK we know today overnight. Not at all.

In fact, the North Carolina-based operation founded in 1948 by Aileen and E.B. Wrightenberry spent its first two decades reselling irregulars before moving into finishing for larger mills.

In 1988, Joey Wrightenberry, grandson of the founders and Wrightsock’s current president, joined the family business and suggested the company purchase knitting machines so it could become a complete producer.

“We had people coming to us who couldn’t get the production they needed,” Wrightenberry recalls. “It was scary to make this investment, but entrepreneurship is about taking chances, isn’t it?”

By the mid-1990s, Wrightsock’s most novel creation, a thoughtfully crafted double-layer sock, boasted patents and growing energy in the run specialty marketplace with its “Anti-Blister System” addressing friction, moisture and heat.

“The double-layer sock became our calling card in run specialty, which helped to make Wrightsock its own brand,” Wrightenberry says.

As competition in the athletic sock landscape has intensified this century, Wrightsock has answered the bell. The company moved to a larger facility in Burlington, NC, in 2000 and also upgraded its knitting machines. More recently, Wrightsock introduced a