The “Sock Queen,” Lisa Riggs, inside a Sam’s Club. | Photo courtesy of Lisa Riggs
By all accounts, Lisa Riggs didn’t set out to build a national apparel retailer. She simply needed to raise money.
More than a decade ago, while running the afterschool sports program at her daughter’s middle school in California, Riggs was searching for a fundraising alternative to the previous year’s T-shirt sale.
She settled on socks. After all, every athlete needs them. Sizing was simple. Colorful designs could become part of a team’s identity.
The fundraiser was a smashing success, with 200 pairs of socks sold in four days at an $18 profit margin per pair. Fundraising revenue skyrocketed by 140%. Riggs, who had left a job in tech more than a decade earlier to stay home with her kids, had stumbled into an opportunity with serious potential.
Today, the company she launched in 2016, Spirit Sox, has worked with the likes of Google, Sony Pictures and the Women’s Elite Rugby League. The socks are marketed toward branded corporate swag, fundraising and schools and sports teams and clubs, though corporate accounts fuel nearly 95% of company revenue.
Riggs, who’s known as the “Sock Queen,” has racked up a good amount of recognition through the years. She was named Sony’s Responsible Sourcing Supplier of the Year last March and was recognized as a 2026 Women’s Business Enterprise Star by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. She has been featured in both local and national publications, has appeared on several podcasts and has been interviewed on TV.
Model and TV personality Brooke Burke is a celebrity endorser. Actress Katherine McNamara has ordered Spirit Sox four different times for four different shows and movies.
“I had never really done anything like this before,” Riggs recalls, though both her father and grandfather were entrepreneurs. “But that hasn’t really stopped me with things I’ve done in my life.”
ONE STEP AT A TIME
Riggs openly admits she had a steep learning curve. For starters, she had no background in manufacturing or apparel design. She taught herself Photoshop for design — “I had no idea how to design socks” — searched for manufacturers and bootstrapped the company with an inheritance from her grandmother. She resisted the urge to seek outside investment, relying instead on loans and lines of credit to finance growth.
That independence was tested during the pandemic, when demand for promotional merchandise collapsed almost overnight. Riggs quickly pivoted to producing custom face masks, allowing the company to survive while maintaining relationships with vendors and customers.
The “fuzzy, dressy, athletic” socks feature colorful designs, including pizzas, tacos, pickles and whales, and are also sold online through the Spirit Sox website. Spirit sells private-label socks at the Hudson News outlet in the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport and in Sam’s Clubs. The company is also licensed by the Collegiate Licensing Company and counts San Diego State University among its biggest customers.
Riggs views women’s sports as the company’s next frontier. Besides rugby, the company is the official sock sponsor of the Golden State Storm of the Women’s National Football Conference. She eventually hopes to outfit every team in the WNBA while also sending a message of inclusion.
“It’s about showing little girls, and little boys, what women can build, both on and off the field,” she says.
Riggs rejects one piece of conventional wisdom many women have heard, that’s she’s “too nice” to succeed.
“I’ve had people tell me that many times,” she says. “I don’t think you have to choose between being kind and being successful.”
