Our Mission and Values

Our Mission at John's Crazy Socks

John's Crazy Socks is a social enterprise with a simple mission: we’re spreading happiness.

Our company was built on the love between father (Mark) and son (John) and their desire to make people happy. Because John has Down syndrome, we have a focus on showing what people with differing abilities can do. That means we hire people with differing abilities and we do all we can through videos, social media shares, warehouse tours, hosting work groups, speaking engagements, advocacy and donations to share with the world what people with differing abilities can do. We are a small company, yet all we are trying to do is change the world.

We know that Giving Back is essential and it is baked into everything we do. It is not enough to just sell stuff. Our mission, our values and our business are personal. What we do matters.

To fulfill this mission, we have created a social enterprise where we have both a social mission and a business mission. It is not enough to simply sell stuff, we need to have a purpose and make our values manifest in all that we do. We serve more than a profit motive, we serve our staff, our customers and our community. 

We built our organization on five pillars: 

• Inspiration and Hope: Employing people with differing abilities and showing what they can do.
• Giving Back: We start by pledging 5 percent of our earnings to the Special Olympics and many of our products raise money for charity partners like the National Down Syndrome Society and Autism Speaks.
• Awesome Products You Can Love: Starting with our socks, everything we offer must be fun and spread happiness.
• Making It Personal: Exemplified by the hand-written thank you note and candy that we put in every package, we make a personal connection with our customers. 
• Make This a Great Place to Work: How can we bring happiness to others if our colleagues are not happy? We have created a work environment where people are respected and valued. We put people in a position to succeed so they can do their best work ever. We want our colleagues to feel good about the work they do. 

What We Believe and Who We Are 

1. Spreading Happiness: Everything we do manifests our desire to spread happiness with our colleagues, customers and community. We are passionate in our desire to wow people, to delight them, to make them smile inside and out. We want to lift others up and in doing so, we raise ourselves up. Spreading happiness comes first and everything follows.
2. Showing What People Can Do When Given an Opportunity: We see abilities, not disabilities. We seek the good in people. We build on empathy, compassion, and encouragement. We are welcoming and inclusive. We are the isle of misfit toys.
3. Fun:We love having fun epitomized by John dancing at work. We make work enjoyable. We are never boring or corporate. We can laugh at ourselves and love to laugh with others. Being fun means we get a little crazy sometimes, after all, we are John’s Crazy Socks. We share that fun with everyone.
4. Teamwork: We start by doing our job but are quick to help others. We know that all of us are smarter than any one of us and that together we can accomplish far more than we can alone. Our focus is on the mission and not competition with our colleagues. We respect and value our colleagues. We learn from our colleagues every day. We are egalitarian: the best idea wins. We show support and kindness, there is already too much meanness in the world. We enjoy collaboration and treasure our diversity.
5. Giving Back: We are fortunate to do what we do and are grateful. We are not takers: we give back with our spirit, talent, time and money so we can lift others. Each of us has a personal responsibility to give back to the community by giving our time, energy and expertise. It is not enough for the business to make donations. Giving back is a personal commitment of each person working here. That means volunteering, joining walks, helping out in the community.
6. Dream Big: We are on a great big adventure. We are bold. We are risk takers. We are creative and love to innovate. We will reach beyond our grasp. Yes, we may fail, but we get right back up. We walk the path that others may not take and relish in that journey. We are not like every other company, do not follow in the paths made by others and do not live by their norms. We have an obligation to our dreams and that helps spread happiness. After all, we are trying to change the world.
7. Strive for excellence: No excuses. Our dreams are worthless if we do not execute. Our dreams are the promises we make, the execution makes the dreams real. We will go the extra step to get things done. If something does not work, we admit it and change it. If we can make something better, we do. We never settle and we never stop improving. It is all part of our journey.
8. Constant Learning: Things will constantly change, so we need to keep learning to stay ahead of changes. We need to learn to keep improving what we do. We need to learn so we can forge our new path. Personal development is important to us and we take time for our personal growth. We read, we take online courses, we watch webinars, we attend conferences, we take field trips and more. The learning never stops. Without each of us learning and growing as individuals, the organization cannot learn and grow.
9. Open and Honest Communication:We are honest and transparent. We are human, we admit our vulnerability and have nothing to hide. We earn trust through our openness. We all make mistakes; the key is to admit and learn from those mistakes. We are direct in our communications. We are good for our word. No BS. No games. We become better people and a better organization by being honest, learning and evolving.
10. Commitment: Our mission and our values mean nothing without a deep personal commitment to them.