Mum-of-seven turns ground-breaking idea into an international business
This week on our Mums Who Inspire series, we caught up with Kezi Levin, successful entreprenuer and mum-of-seven. If you have a story that you would like to be featured, email mumswhoinspire[at]magicmum[dot]com.
Kezi Levin doesn't take no for an answer.
Married straight out of high school, she ignored the nay-sayers who said she'd never get a college degree. She did.
Attending the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for Graphic Design, she had three children in the space of her 3 year degree.
Constantly told that she was crazy and she would never finish her studies, she ignored the negativity and continued to balance three children with full-time study. She would run out of the library with morning sickness or race home between lectures to feed or collect the children from day care.
The mum-of- seven and founder of Sock Ons, credits her success to two things, determination and excellent time-management.
Mum-of-seven to 6 boys and a new baby girl, her family, she jokes, "covers the whole paediatric scale". Ranging in age from 19 to one, she's also juggling her eldest in college, one doing their A-levels and another doing their GCSEs.
With time of the essence, she was consonantly trying to think of way to make her young family's life run a bit smoother.
Then an idea came to her- at a family wedding.
"Everyone was dressed up for the wedding," she recalls. "We were all looking our best, even the kids. The youngest kept pulling off his socks, I wanted to put him in tights to make life easier, but his brothers wouldn't let me!"
Sure enough as the day went on, the socks disappeared. "I looked down at the youngest in the buggy and I realised that he had pulled his socks off!"
She then got thinking- was there an easier way to keep socks on baby's feet? After looking around, she realised that there was nothing out there- at least nothing that worked.
Using her graphic design training, she spent the next three years experimenting with various materials and designs for keeping socks on, before patenting the idea.
"I would ring stockists while doing the school run," she remembers. "They never picked up, but when one eventually did, the kids were fighting in the back of the car. It was crazy!"
Her big break came ten years ago, in the form of the last stall in the Kind + Jugend baby fair.
Despite being "tucked away in a corner" they scooped the prize for innovation. The orders started to come in thick and fast. Levin began to diversify into other products such as baby moccasins and bibs.
As Sock Ons grew, family and friends encouraged her to sell the company and walk away. They argued that it would be the best for the brand to sell to a larger company. Again, Levin didn't want to take no for an answer.
"I guess I'm a bit of a control freak," she admits. "I didn't want to see something I'd worked so hard on and believed in in someone else's hands."
And it paid off, over a million Sock On products have been sold in over 20 countries to date and are available in all major UK stockists.
Levin says that she is "incredibly lucky" to have a job that fits around her family life of "happy mayhem".
"I work for relaxation," she reveals. "Sometimes it's easier to deal with stockists and business people than it is to deal with children."
Having children, only served to add to her persistence. "Seeing kids persevere when they want something taught me to keep going."
She advises any mum with a ground-breaking idea to "go with your stage of life."
"The idea's the easy bit, the real hard work is what comes next. But it's been a blessing to be able to create something around my family."
Sock Ons are available on Amazon and selected retailers nationwide.