House colours, a school crest, and a sock that gets worn rather than put in a drawer. What we need from you, what it costs and how long it takes.
Societal Socks knits custom socks for schools. House socks in house colours, school socks carrying the school crest, kit socks for school sport, and pairs a development office sends to alumni or hands to a family looking round. The crest is knitted into the fabric rather than printed on top of it, so it does not crack, peel or wash off.
One run is one design in one size. Nobody collects a shoe size from anybody, which is the part of a uniform order that normally falls apart.
Societal Socks has a minimum order of 100 pairs per design, which for most schools is one house or one year group.
Societal Socks prices custom socks at £4 a pair for 100 to 500 pairs.
The lead time is 7-8 weeks, from the day your invoice is paid to the day the socks arrive.
We send mock-ups within 24 hours of getting your colours and your artwork.
The design work is included in the order: there is no setup fee and no artwork charge.
Every pair is knitted in Europe.
House socks are knitted in the colours of a pupil's house rather than the colours of the school. Each house is its own design, so a school with eight houses is looking at eight socks and eight runs. What a house is, and where the system came from, is in house socks: what are they and why do schools use them and in how school colours ended up on socks.
Inside a school the order usually starts in one of three places. The development office buys them to send to alumni and to give to visiting prospective parents. The school shop buys them to sell to pupils and parents. Housemasters and housemistresses buy them as an affordable way to let pupils show house pride day to day. Often it is a mix: one of those three starts it, the others join, and the minimum gets split between them.
Your crest or logo is translated into a stitch grid - a pixel pattern - which is used to knit your logo onto the sock.
Bold enclosed shapes survive: a shield, a chevron, a cross, a key, a lion reduced to its silhouette. Fine detail does not, and an 8pt motto is not a matter of trying harder. The full list of what survives is under design and artwork.
The whole process is set out in how a crest goes on a sock. We handle the design work from there, with unlimited revisions, and we are happy to talk directly to house teams so the sock is one the pupils actually want.
A photograph of a tie, a scarf or a spare sports shirt is often more use to us than a logo file, because it carries the colours as they really are rather than as a brand guide says they should be. Send that, your crest if you have it, and a rough idea of numbers.
You can also hand us a sock you have had made elsewhere and ask for a better one. Some schools arrive with a finished design and want a superior manufacturer; some arrive with a vague idea. Both are fine.
Crew is our most popular sock and it is what most schools order: tried, tested, and the height most people wear most days. It gives you a panel on the calf for the crest, room for stripe bands, and a cuff, heel and toe you can colour separately. Other heights are available, including a longer sock for match kit and a sports build for anything trained in. Tell us what the sock is for and we will tell you which to pick, or see the socks themselves.
We knit one adult size and it fits UK foot sizes 5 to 13, which covers roughly 95% of adult feet in the UK. There is nothing to collect, nothing to guess at and no size to get wrong.
Every run is one design in one size, and the minimum of 100 pairs applies per design. A repeat order is a fresh run, so a school with the same design and a new year group orders the same way it did the first time. Schools find that 100 pairs maps neatly onto one year group, so it works as a repeat annual order rather than a one-off.
In exceptional circumstances, on large orders spanning many houses, we are happy to enter multi-year supply contracts to bring the minimum down. If eight houses want eight designs and none of them individually reaches 100 pairs, that is the conversation to have with us.
You sign off the design, we invoice you, and sock production starts once that invoice is paid.
Count back 7 to 8 weeks from the date you need the socks in hand, then add however long your own side takes to agree a design and settle the invoice. The mock-up comes back within 24 hours, so the design stage moves at the speed of your decisions rather than ours.
£4 a pair for 100 to 500 pairs, with the design work inside that and no setup fee. The figures are set out with the reasoning behind them on pricing, minimum order and lead time, and the whole process from first email to delivery is on how it works.
Our clients are on the home page, with what we made for each of them.
More answers on our FAQs page.
Yes. Send a photograph of a tie, a scarf or a spare shirt and we match to that rather than to a colour code. A design can use six colours in total, and the base colour is one of the six. Two or three usually read better on a sock than six do.
Societal Socks has a minimum order of 100 pairs per design, and there are no setup costs. Eight houses means eight designs, so eight runs of 100.
In exceptional circumstances, on large orders spanning many houses, we are happy to enter multi-year supply contracts to reduce the minimum.
Societal Socks prices custom socks at £4 a pair for 100 to 500 pairs. The design work is included in the order: there is no setup fee and no artwork charge.
The lead time is 7-8 weeks, from the day your invoice is paid to the day the socks arrive. Production starts once the invoice is paid. The slow part is the knitting, not the design: mock-ups come back within 24 hours.
No, and this is the main reason schools order socks rather than clothing. We knit one adult size and it fits UK foot sizes 5 to 13, roughly 95% of adult feet in the UK.
Knitted into the fabric, not printed on top of it, so it does not crack, peel or wash off. That matters for something that goes through a school laundry.
Every pair is knitted in Europe.
Send your house colours, your crest and a rough idea of numbers, and we will come back with a mock-up.