Profile: John Houston, 'Sock Man'

Houston sells — you guessed it — socks. Lots and lots of them. But why socks? And how did he get started in this business?

Tell me a about how you began selling socks.

One day, I saw a guy selling socks out of the trunk of his car and I thought to myself, "That might work on a massive scale." So I started selling socks out of the trunk of my car. I started going from neighborhood to neighborhood, from barbershops to beauty salons to grocery stores to plazas. And I had this little beat-up car, and I put a sign on the side of it that said “Socks” and my phone number. People called me, and one thing led to another. I graduated and I got myself a van. A buddy of mine painted a sign on the side of the van. It said “Sock Man.”

Before I go on and tell you the rest of the story, let me tell you a little bit about where I came from and how difficult it was. I was strung out on drugs. I was homeless for years, and I lived in a cardboard box. My store that I have on Glenwood Road in Decatur that’s open today, I used to sleep behind that building in a cardboard box. I grew up right in this neighborhood. I came out of high school with a football scholarship to Florida State University. To get out of college and stumble into an addiction that took me to the gates of hell was really a traumatic experience.