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by ALLISON CASEY
Lifestyles Editor
What was once lost in your dryer can now be found on CBS Evening News.
Appalachian State University alumni and half-brothers Brian Easter and Adam Harrell were recently featured on CBS Evening News because of their successful online sock business.
They acquired Socks4Life through their business NeboWeb, a Web site design and marketing company.
The company sells specialty socks including boot socks, which are used on the show “The Deadliest Catch.”
Other socks include diabetic, slouch and athletic socks.
 Photo by The Appalachian.
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“We look
for opportunities where we’re well-positioned,” Easter said. “There are
certain industries that we can craft a site that will dominate the
industry.”
Socks4Life
was the brainchild of two former Appalachian students who founded the
company through the Appalachian State University Center for
Entrepreneurship, where Easter sits on the board.
“We worked out a deal where we owned half the company,” Easter said. “They grew with us. We had a great relationship.”
Eventually, Harrell and Easter took over the company and grew it 80 percent in the last year.
Harrell, who graduated in 2003 with a degree in political science, started his first business at age 14.
Both Harrell’s father and grandfather are also Appalachian alumni.
“My
parents really believed in hard work,” Easter said. “I had to get a job
when I was 14, not because I needed to, but because they wanted me to.”
Easter
worked his way through college while maintaining a 3.9 grade point
average in his computer information systems major and a 3.73 overall
GPA.
In the
spring of 1997 Easter took an Internet marketing course where he
learned some of the skills he used to grow his businesses.
“I thought that was pretty pioneering,” he said. “It wasn’t something universities were doing.”
When he graduated in 1998, Internet businesses were becoming increasingly successful due to the “dot-com bubble” of the 90’s.
“That was when if you knew even basic HTML you could do really well,” he said.
Although Easter’s first business attempt right out of college failed, he is now a successful businessman.
Socks4Life was recently featured on a CBS Evening News piece about businesses doing well despite the economy.
“When
CBS called, we thought it was a sales call,” Easter said. “It was
really cool. It makes you feel good. We really appreciated it.”
Even
though Socks4Life was only featured for a few seconds, Easter said the
site shut down for 14 hours due to increased traffic.
As for
starting a business, Easter said, “Do your homework. It’s like that old
expression, ‘measure twice, cut once.’ You have to minimize your
opportunity for failure.”
“A lot
of people won’t agree with me, but do it when you’re young and
energetic,” Easter said. “When you’re older you have mortgages, car
payments, kids. You don’t have time. I started my first business out of
college, and it failed. But I tried again with NeboWeb and succeeded.”
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