Heel Tread

Goncalo Henriques - Co-Founder at Heel Tread, Curator and Stereo Socks for Heel Tread

In September 2017 I founded Heel Tread and I'm fully dedicated to this project. Heel Tread is a brand of socks Inspired by passions, from music to cars, creating a solid emotional connection with our products.

Contact: Goncalo Henriques at info@heeltread.com | N/A | Visit Online!

             

• What’s the inspiration behind the brand? What’s the Origin Story of Heel Tread?
• What kinds of products does Heel Tread offer?
• What was the first design produced by Heel Tread?
• What are your top-3 favorite designs?
• What’s the strangest inspiration/design HT has been asked to produce?
• HT is celebrating their 4th anniversary and we’ve been following HT for years (check our IG for real-life examples of GTM’ers wearing HT apparel), and in the last 2, you’ve moved from Automobiles and Motorsports; introduced Motorcycles… and now Airplanes? Why? and What’s next?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. I don’t know how many times I’ve been getting ready for a presentation and someone has leaned over to me in a conference room and said, isn’t that the G T I plaid?

Or where did you get those socks? Because let’s face it, socks are the new tie. Portugal based heel tread is a unique brand of socks that draws its inspiration from motor sports. And aircraft. Their collection pays tribute to some of the world’s most renowned automotive icons. And so with us today is John Slo Enriquez, head of Sock Affairs at Heel Tread to talk to us about one of our favorite fashionista accessories.

Socks. Welcome to Break Fix Gonzalo. Yeah, thank you. So I have to say, many of us here at gtm, myself included, have been wearing heel tread gear for many years and we absolutely love it. I happen to be wearing my [00:01:00] Senna socks today. Oh, great. So let’s, let’s talk about the inspiration behind the brand. What’s the origin story of Heel Trent?

Well, actually the first idea was to do socks with no drawings on it. So I’m 43. When I launched the brand, I was 40. I love colorful socks with bold patterns and colors, but the market only showed us pineapples, cherries, and things that only kids should wear, and I’m not comfortable doing that. So that was the first idea.

So socks are the new ties as you told, and there’s a big market to explore. But then my partner, Joel, just got in the project and we are two real big petrol heads, motorbikes, cars, everything. So the thing is, there’s so much color and so much patterns and so many levers that we can inspire on that. We wanted to do our first collection inspired by cars only the first collection.

And the thing worked so, so, so, so well. Okay. This, this deserves a brand just for this, and the options are infinite. So there’s so many cool cars and every year there’s so many new cars that are launched. [00:02:00] So we have, let’s say, material to work for 10, 15, 20 years. So there’s a, a big market. So that was the first of year.

Socks without drawings, and then socks inspired by cars. So what was the first design produced by Tre? Well, the first two ones were the, the Porsche rsr, the Martini Lere, and the E 30 with the BMW Motorsports ones. That was the easiest ones. And actually one of the, still one of the best sellers today. It just happens to be similar thread colors too.

So that made it kind of easy to change the design, huh? Yeah, and the stripes of of the E 30 are just so easy to do. It’s, it’s our coolest. I love them. I still love them. I still wear them, uh, every time I have the opportunity. Before we dive a little bit deeper and geek out on the heel tread designs and whatnot, let’s tell our audience what kind of products that heel tread offers.

Is it just socks? Is there something else? Are there other themed items? For now, we offer socks, regular socks, and low socks. We launched last year, Apollo Line. We have. Three Polo [00:03:00] Designs. We launched also a key ring collection. We are now on the fine tuning of launching some underwear and potentially sunglasses.

So any tips on that would be really good. And if you have any ideas you can share with us, just drop us an email and all feedback is very important for us. Going back and talking about the designs a little bit, what were your top. Three favorite designs of all the ones that you’ve put out so far?

Actually, one is the G t A, the Alfa Romeo. It’s not one of our top sales, but I just love the details of the, all the headlights and, and the grill and the colors of the sock. They’re really cool for the nine 30 pack, the plate seats, we just got one that was, uh, a Tarin from Magnus Walker that he used on in one of his cars.

And actually was that the, was that the Pasha socks? No, no, not Apache. It’s, it’s a nine 30 pack inspiring on the plate seats that got out on the nine 30 Turbo for the first time and there’s five or six and we got one that’s not period, correct. Sorry for all the purists, but we just [00:04:00] got it from Magnus Walker and it’s a really yellow, blue green.

Very cool pattern and the socks are really amazing. Uh, actually my, my favorites. Yeah, because the Pasha ones, a lot of people don’t realize are Porsche inspired as well. Those come from the 9 28, if I recall. Exactly. Exactly. And there’s some other crazy, the Pasha, the pepita. We have a category just seats.

We have the, the seats from the first and three also the roof CT one, the, the yellow birds. So there’s so many cool patterns from seats that we can be inspired in, in that, and, and that’s endless also. The G t a, the Roro male, the Tartan Pack from Magnus Walker. Is there a third favorite in there? Top three.

I also love, actually, it’s not my idea, but the Vmax socks from Ade game. From, uh, outrun. Outrun. Yeah. Outrun socks are really cool. Actually love them. I forgot the pink pig because they’re my daughter’s favorite. They’re, she’s always asking when, when I’m wearing the, the pink pig socks because she loves pink.

Yeah. Actually, this is a fun story. We launched the pink pig. We weren’t. Very confident [00:05:00] about the success, and I actually have a bet with my partner. We have a very expensive dinner, and if we sold, I don’t know, I don’t recall how many pairs in, in the first day, the one who lost would pay a dinner to the other one, and by noon we already broke that record.

So it was a real, real success. So the pink, pink, it’s, it’s actually not a bad famous car, but. We actually love them, has a very cool story behind it. I think every card there has a very cool story behind it has a space on on our collection. Funny you mention that because I know a bunch of people in our organization that did order those socks and additionally Porsche resurrected that live a couple years ago and the nine 11 rsr.

So I think your timing was perfect. Yeah. Cause people, people were seeing that car at Lamont’s and IMSA races, et cetera. So I think it was actually right on the nose in Yeah, we were lucky. Yeah, we’re lucky. Do these favorite designs coincide with your personal favorite vehicles? If not, what are your top three favorite cars?

I’m a big Porsche fan. Actually. My favorite car, the car that I had as, as a poster when as a kid was a a [00:06:00] 9 93 Forester. Look, that’s my favorite car. All very expensive. My favorite supercar is the, the McLaren f1. It’s the only supercar I like. Actually, if I would be very, very rich, I would be ordering a new garden mare car, the T 50, the T, the Garden Murray T 50.

It’s so, so cool, and I think they’re going to launch a C version with less a arrow because he has a big fan and it’s, it’s a crazy supercar, a simple one, just a V12 natural aspirator. That’s, that’s the kind of cars I really love. I love the, the alpha, the gt, the alcoholics one for me, it would be a dream car also.

That’s the new EV alpha, correct? The retro model? No, no, no, no, no. It’s a retro model. It’s not the ev It’s, it’s one done by alcoholics. It’s about 300 horsepower. It costs 200,000 euros or more than that. There’s an a new one, an ev not from the same guys. These, these are British guys. There’s a very cool Chris Harris video that you need to see on YouTube of him driving the alcoholics and, and actually that’s a top gear episode that they went back and got the car, [00:07:00] uh, from the last season.

So it’s a really re mode purist, rear end drive manual shift, and just. Big engine. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s, that’s, so do you go to the track? Do you have a race car or anything like that? No. Okay. Actually, I, I love cars. I love riding them on the streets or I’m not the track guy. I actually, my biggest motor sport hobby is just offroading dirt biking.

That’s the biggest fun you can have with the lowest risk of getting injured. I did some track days. We sponsored a cat and, and I did a, a three day course or training and actually it was a lot of fun. I like drifting. I’m not the guy with a, with a stopwatch just wanting to shave, uh, have a second every lap.

I like to have fun driving cars to drift, to do something different. That’s why I like more off-road that you can do more of that. You cannot go rallying in the streets. It’s too complicated. So offroading is the only thing available to do that kind of, of riding over driving, even though, is there one race car or maybe two that you [00:08:00] would just turn over everything to get behind the wheel of?

Is it an alfaro male, like the 1 55? No, I would love to be in the DTM car. It would be a, a rally car. I think it would be the cuatro. Or I think it would be an inter rally or a Subaru they call McCroy one. Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s absolutely, it’s, it would be definitely, ah, there’s one car I would give everything to have a, you know, the, the last singer, nine 11, the off-road one with total Porsche.

I would sell everything. Do you know the movie where it’s actually touch is? Um, I don’t know if it’s or Tu till Porsche, the c e o that’s driving, driving the car in the beach and everything. That’s what I want. I would love to do. That’s the, that’s awesome. The coolest. That’s the coolest thing I saw in the last 10 years.

That I really, that’s my, my kind of car. Yeah. Actually, I love everything. Delivery. The colors, the, the noise, the, that’s it. Yeah. And we gotta get socks to go with it. Right. So, you know, we always say petrol heads of a certain age and we’re in that similar [00:09:00] age range where, you know, group B was a thing when we were growing up, when other certain supercars.

We weren’t in the mural generation, but we were in the Kunta and the F 40 generation. The 9 59, no cars like that. What do you think of those cars? Cause you said you only like the McLaren f1. What are your thoughts on those kind of iconic of the period Supercars? I like the 9 59. It’s a very cool technological essay.

I don’t think it’s a pretty car. The F 40 is just. Yeah, for it. That’s, that’s should be on a museum. But cars should be, should be driven. I think it’s so stupid that you have a very expensive car and you don’t drive it. It’s doesn’t make sense. But actually they’re not my favorite generation. Maybe I li I’m a little bit younger because, I, I, I was a motorcycle guy until I was 16.

I only liked bikes and then the car passion just went on from there and, and when I started driving, so those cars are free. My passion, not my edge, but my passion. So, but I love, I love the contest as, as I remember when I was a kid. I saw a Lamborghini, the LM 200, the the, [00:10:00] the off-road one at the beach here in Portugal.

And I was just standing there for five minutes and saying, what the fuck is this? And it was more hardcore than a Humvee. And it was exactly 20, 20 years before, and it was a red one. I, I don’t, some things you don’t forget. I, I remember where it was parked in the beach. It’s still a beach I still, I still go to.

And it was just that. Unbelievable car. And that’s, so I’m, you saw the Lamborghini. I saw a white one in person and I just, the same thing. You’re just like, what am I looking at? Exactly. And then you realize the Humvee, I think took some of its inspiration from that Lamborghini. So since we’re talking about that, what do you think is this sexiest car of all time?

It needs to be the alpha romemu, the the 33. I think that’s, uh, just, uh, an artwork with, with rubber that’s, it’s, it’s so, so beautiful from every point of view. I am starting to see a theme here. You’re very much an Alpha Rome male fan, which speaks to me personally. Yeah. I am very much as well. So that’s very, very cool.

So let’s flip that on its nose. And since you’re in the [00:11:00] eu, you’re over in Portugal, what’s the ugliest car in your opinion? Uh, gotta be the fiat multiplier. Yeah, I know it’s, it’s a repeated card, but for me that’s, we don’t have the Pontiac Aztec. I think that should be the It’s one from the us Yeah, the US equivalent of the multiplex.

Exactly. Yeah. Some strange things that got, I imported from the US here, the Chrysler, I dunno remember the name. They were really, really ugly, but on top of it, they were rare in Europe, so it was a strange, sweet and sour thing. So they are, So different. They could be cool, but they are really ugly at the same time.

So you’re not gonna make any ugly socks anytime soon, huh? No, no, no, no. Maybe, yeah, maybe as a gag. We have a thing. The socks that we do need to be beautiful. Even if you don’t have a relationship with the car, they need to be socks that you find Cool. So we always sometimes tweak our designs or just go a little bit off from the car to make the sock a, a cool sock so there’s no ugly socks.

Yeah. I’m [00:12:00] with you. I think of doing, of doing a black sock for the F 117, the steal fighter. It’s going to be all black sock. I think it’s going to be our joke for this year. Let me see. That’d be pretty funny. I mean, I’m, and I’m with you there. The socks that draw my attention the most aren’t necessarily the ones that I associate with the most.

Now. For instance, the Land Rover ones, the Series two socks. I love those. I like wearing those around. Those get people’s attention. They’re very subtle, you know, light green with that squareish pattern. Yeah, yeah. The other one is the, uh, the nine 11 rsr, the old 72 73 early car, you know, short nose nine 11.

Those are real popular. And the GTI ones always get people’s attention cause they’re like, oh, that’s a very specific tartan type of pattern. And you know, it, it really gets people’s, uh, yeah, g t I was our best seller. It still is our best seller by far. So the GTIs are really, really cool. The thing is, when we launched, it was not on our first collection.

We got about 10 comments every day. Do GT Sox do? Gt Sox do. And we took about three months to do that. And when we did, it was [00:13:00] crazy because it’s a very hard pattern to need. It’s a very concentrated pattern, not that easy to produce. So we needed a lot of production effort, but now that we did it, it’s really, really cool.

So is it more difficult with designs that require a logo? Do you have to get permission for that sort of stuff? Like how does that process work when you’re doing the design of socks? Yeah, we don’t have many official socks. We have official collaborations with some brands. We don’t like to put logos on the socks.

That’s merchandising socks. If you wanna Ferrari socks with the logo, you just buy them at Ferrari. That’s not what we do. We’ll have something inspired from the car. And we don’t aim to be official merchandise because that will limit our creativity. Okay. Right. So that’s one of the issues. Yeah. We have some collaborations that make sense.

For example, for the, with the Lotus Classic team that supported us from the beginning, from Theam, the organization. But the big brands, I don’t think that makes much sense to work with them, because if not, it’ll be a merchandise brand. We can produce socks for them if they want, but it doesn’t make much [00:14:00] sense on our collection.

Yeah, and I saw that we ordered the wind socks, the purple ones, when they won their class back last year. Yeah. Or the year before, rather. You know, I could see that there’s always the potential, and that’s also why, you know, some people are like, well, why don’t they make a. A golf R sock, and I’m like, well, what would that look like?

It would be blue with an R logo. Yeah. That’s all it would be. It wouldn’t be that exciting. Yeah. In some of the newer cars, I think it’s actually harder to pull inspiration from more modern cars because the designs are more sleek. They’re not using more outlandish. Patterns like they did in the eighties and even in the nineties where they’re like, they wanted to get your attention with the, the clads and the tartans and et cetera.

But what would you say are some of the top trending, most popular designs at heel tread outside of the ones you mentioned, like the E 30 and the G ti and things like that? Well, the, actually the Lotus. Sends car with a Camel logo. It is low dose 1990. It’s pretty popular right now. Airplanes are picking up Spitfire Mustang.

Corsair socks are really, really selling. I [00:15:00] think everyone likes cars like airplanes. People like airplanes like cars. If it has an engine, If it makes a lot of noise, I think people will always love it and they are su such iconic and classic patterns that it works. Let me pull out some interesting stats from ourselves from last month, the 49 Socks also from Lotus Classic Livery, the Center socks from inspired by the helmets.

Okay. The Alpha 1 55 socks, they’re really love with, with a serpent there. They’re really, really cool. Um, I have those too. Yeah, those are really cool. We launched the Eminence LANCIA 0 3 7. It actually was a very rare car, and we got permission from the owner to do his car with the license plate and everything.

So he got That’s awesome. And he got some socks, so that’s a lot of fun. We got. Customers with impressive, it’s not impressive. Crazy car collection in the millions. They just reach out and say, Hey, do you wanna do this, this car? Or just, just, they send me a picture with the socks and the car and I say, oh, that’s not real Cars [00:16:00] in in the millions.

And, and actually that’s one of the coolest things of working in this brand is. The attention and the care that the fans or customers, whatever you want to call it, give us. It’s, it’s really, really cool. People that love this, their cars with impressive car collection or just a simple car that just tweaked in his garage for years and years, they reach out and say, Hey, can you do the, uh, so spot on this model?

Do you have that one? Or just send us the pictures riding the cars. So it’s, it’s so, so cool. It’s very, very interesting. So what’s some of the strangest inspiration, you know, really odd requests that people have made of Heal Trip and say, Hey, can, like you’re saying, can you make this, what are, you know, some of those top things that you’re like, well I don’t know that we could ever do that.

Or something that people are constantly asking for that hasn’t been been made yet. There’s a crazy fan of ours that’s was spamming our social media every freaking day, just asking for Maserati shots. And, you know, doing a Maserati is not that easy because they’re so slick. I, I love Maseratis, they’re beautiful, but, but you have the details that we needed and we cannot do just a logo that [00:17:00] on that.

We never did it. It’s on our plan. We’ll do the Maserati mc 12 this year. Okay. It’s on our list. And I think it’s one of the coolest one. And the colors are really great and a lot of Opal, I don’t know if you Opal is, is a German brand. Crazy Opal fans from Germany didn’t just ask us for a hot hatch from the seventies and very rare opals.

And that’s, that’s a big community and we can Iban, I. Could see some of Thera the Opal rally cars like the cadet, the GT E and things like that. Yeah. Crazy. A lot of Opal fans and especially the the cadet, because didn’t Walter Rural run one of those before? Group B got big? Yeah. We actually have some Audi Qtro socks signed by Walter Rural.

Oh wow. That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, that’s, so I wanted to ask you about, since you brought it up, you guys chose the S one livery, right? Or the, the E two, they call it in some circles. Why not the actual Audi Sport colors, which were brown, red, and gray. It’s ecar, it’s uh, it has the same colors. It’s the R five.

You go to our [00:18:00] website and you go for R five starts. Yeah. R five GTO O sucks, but actually here in Europe, the other one is more, a lot more famous. The yellow one. Interesting. Because even Michelle Bouton drove a black car for one year as well, so that was another pattern that they had, you know, back then.

Yeah. It’s, it’s lesser known, but I, I was just curious like what the decision processes. I obviously starting with the most popular ones makes the most sense. And then do you guys feel like. It’s necessary to do variations on the theme and have other versions of similar periods, or do you wanna just have one iconic moment and move on and have tons of variation?

It’s always a personal thing for me. The Aldi cuatro is the other one. The other one is the secondary delivery. Let, let’s say, so for us it was really immediate to, to do this one as long as there’s interest and if the car is a cool story behind it. We can do everything. The Eminence never, the Eminence lunch at 0 3 7.

He never won anything, but it was so different and we had access to the, the driver, we did the minority also where the [00:19:00] contact with the pilot that won Grand Prix on it. It’s, it’s not direct, directly connect with the part of results of the car or with the number of fans. If there’s a cool story behind it, we’ll probably do it.

So are you open to a couple suggestions while we’re talking? Yeah, sure. All right. Hear me out. I’m thinking Alitalia cuz I, I bought the ST 180 5 socks going. That’s close enough. And I could, I could get away with it. Unless you’re a real Petrolhead. So something Alitalia Stratos related? No, we actually did the first edition of the Stratos that was not so related with Alitalia.

It was a more abstract and redone it. And now it’s really, really cool. Yeah. It’s one of our top sellers. You’ll make. My sister Alitalia is a must It’s, it is a must have. Yeah. Well, you’ll make my sister very happy. Then the other one, since you mentioned Black Sox, I was thinking about the Sona Mercedes one 90 E, the Evo two.

We had it, but it was not, Such a big seller and we discontinued it, but we had it. Ah, see, see, it’s, it’s, I hate to say [00:20:00] it’s a lot like blip shift. You gotta be there at the right time and then designs appear and disappear. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it is. The W 2 0 1 sucks. Yeah. We had, it had it past tense. So if you’re going black socks, like I said now, I would also add, I would love to see a DeLorean sock cuz gray, there’s not really too many gray socks in the catalog, but not a back to the future one.

Right. A actual DeLorean. Um, we have the back to the future one. Yeah. And actually, so, so cool. There’s a car gathering in Germany only with movie cars. And we have a picture of the socks. They have the dates and everything, like to the back to the future one, and they have a replica and we have a picture of the socks.

So, so cool. I think you can, there’s a, there’s an Instagram post about it, uh, recently you can, you can check that out. And on behalf of someone else in the organization, we were talking about this before the show and I said, you know, would be really cool to have some juro or etal design inspired socks.

And then she chimed up and everybody’s gonna know who this is. She chimed up and went Fiat Panda. [00:21:00] And I’m like, okay. A lot of people don’t realize this really One pin pen, that car. Yeah. So Juro would be really cool, uh, if there’s anything that you could do there. Al design was awesome. Obviously he’s famous for the launch of Delta, the Rocco, the rabbits, the DeLorean.

I mean, he’s paying so many cars over the years. Now is, is there any talk about maybe US based motorsport coming to Heal Tread, let’s say nascar? Is there anything you guys can do there? Yeah, it’s a shame. We did a big collection of NASCAR cars that tied one, um, the, the foremost famous and they actually, they were not big sellers even in the us.

I don’t know if maybe NASCAR fans are not more classic petrol heads, but it wasn’t a big success. The success actually, we discontinued all of them. And the And the socks were really, really cool. Yeah. So do you have a section of the website where you can see the archived socks, like designs that are no longer in production, that people could say added to a wishlist and maybe you get an idea [00:22:00] of what they would be interested in?

Look at those trends. Well, that could be interesting. That could be a cool idea. Yeah, that’s, that’s cool. We have a lot of them because if, if not, we have just too many socks available and, and it would be very complicated to shop on the website. We would have more than 200 designs, actually have about 150 now and just.

Too complicated, but we can do that. That’s a cool idea. We just, uh, archive and we have a lot of them cool ones that we like to relaunch for limited editions or something like that. There’s, there’s always will to do it. Yeah. If you’re giving me the option to click and say, let me know when this becomes available, you tally that up and you get a hundred, 200 people saying, I really want these NASCAR socks, and suddenly it’s like, well, we should probably make these and make ’em available.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, he’ll try to celebrating its. Fourth anniversary, and we’ve been following you guys for years, and you can check out our Instagram to see examples of GTMs actually wearing heel treaded apparel and et cetera. And in the last two years, you guys have obviously very quickly moved from automobiles and motorsports into motorcycles [00:23:00] that came very fast.

And then now airplanes. So what’s next? Well for us, as long as it, it has an engine and we can rev it or just go full throttle, we’ll do it. I think we have now, we launched our first boat Arfa boat. Makes sense. It has a Lamborghini engine, so it makes total sense. But I think we’ll explore more the airplanes and, and all cool cars that really work and then people appreciate it.

So there’s many cool airplanes that we can do. We’ll not do airliners and, and and t w stocks and things like that. Doesn’t make sense. No PanAm, come on. No PanAm, no nothing like that. We have an impressive collection of other military vehicles that makes sense in cool stuff. We launched the, um, American British Icon specs that have a tank, a four by four, an airplane in a, a fighter in a bomber.

So they are really, really cool. Duplicate. You have the G Willy socks, and I think we’ll go more that way in maybe some crazy, a little bit of the shirts thing, but, but we’re still thinking, I think that the, the big plan for [00:24:00] now is getting into underwear. Sunglasses that could be really cool. But in the socks.

And, and maybe polos or t-shirts, I don’t know. But we have a big list of cars that we want to do, so and, and then fans ask for it, so. So you mentioned earlier about other ideas and and tips, and now you said again, your underwear and polo shirts and sunglasses, but what about watches? I had that idea. I’m a big watch fan.

I have a cool watch collection. I would spend all my money on cars and watches. A hundred percent. I’m in agreement with you there. I thought about it and it’s actually not that complicated and interesting. The thing is, It’ll be always inspired in an Omni Speedmaster or a Rolex. Uh, and it’s, I don’t know, how could we do it outside of watches?

That would be really cool. And right up your guys’ alley would be watch bands inspired by cars. Yeah. It could be cool. Yeah. To do a more interesting or more in depth watch bands. I’m a big, big fan of NATO stripes and they’re really inexpensive to buy, have a big collection. And it just changes your watch every [00:25:00] day.

So Exactly. And so a matching heel tread watch band to go with your socks, partner it up, and you keep your watch the same. Now everybody’s standardized 20 millimeter, 22 millimeter with a quick release it. You know, it takes like two seconds to change your watch band. And I went outta my way. With Fossil to buy a watch.

At the time, they were kind of positioning it that it was like a golf livery nine 11 style. And I was like, I gotta have that. Even if I don’t want the watch, I need the watch banned. But uh, yeah, so that’d be something else to do and I think that would actually sell really well and you could do a combo and now you have this matching thing to go with it.

So if something to think about, you know? Yeah. Thanks. It’s a very cool, cool tip. Like I’ve given it some thought, but uh, so let’s talk about other brands, sister Brands to Heal, tread that people might not know about. I was digging around and I noticed on the website recently there’s curator sox.com.

What’s that all about? Actually, curator, our office manager, Lina, she’s a big art fan and what we rebranded our company to be a company that caters to passions. So our biggest passion is [00:26:00] art. So we did a a sock brand inspired by all the famous artworks, and we launched in February last year and it worked out really, really well.

Not as good as Assil Shred. I think the petrol heads are more possessive on, on that way than Art guys. And in July last year, me and Jo were also big music fans. We launched Stereo Socks. That’s it’s inspired by the coolest album covers. It doesn’t mean to be the album that sells more records or most famous, but we do socks inspired on the coolest songs like Depeche Mode’s Vi like Depeche Mode’s violator album.

Right. That would make sense. Exactly. Sense the sock. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, it’s really, really cool. It’s a black sock with the only, the, the, the flower. And we did it in a really special way. They were really cool. Exactly. And I showed my wife the curator socks, cuz that’s more her style. And she was like, I didn’t know they did, I didn’t know they did this.

And I’m like, yeah, I think you did order some. Or at least I know what, at least I know what I’m getting her for Christmas this year. That’s for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. So, you know, as we kind of wrap up our thought here, is there anything else you want to talk about that I didn’t, [00:27:00] that I didn’t ask or didn’t mention?

No, no, it’s been terrific to be involved. It’s like paying us to work because all the contacts that we made are always big petrol heads people have are really, really nice. We’ve been asked to visit the McLaren head office actually. Then Covid appeared, but we have an invitation to, to do the full tour.

Every time there’s a race, we can get free invitations and go to the paddock and, and, and talk to everyone. I actually, I was sitting down on a Ferri two 50 gto, the other one in the millions that were going racing in Portugal. The guy was so nice and we visited it, showed us all the car collection that they had.

A lot of cool stuff and I just want to thank the community because it’s been so, so cool these past four years to be a part of it. Yeah, and again, you’re spreading that enthusiasm about motorsports, about automobiles. They are more than just appliances, getting us from point A to point B. There’s a lot of art, there’s a lot of science, engineering, et cetera involved.

And so this way, We get to wear our passion, we get to take it out there on the streets and show people, Hey, [00:28:00] check out this cool design. Or you get that question? What is that? What are you wearing? Exactly. Where did you get that? Well, I got it over at heel tread and you definitely gotta check it out. So with that in mind, any shout outs, promotions, special discounts, anything you wanna tell the world about coming up here in our holiday season?

Yeah, we actually are going to have a big Black Friday promotion as everyone does. It’s going to start at the end of November, so you can subscribe to our newsletter and be the first to get that information and a lot of cool things coming up until the end of the year. We’re launching also port socks and Kneehigh socks.

You can wear them to when you go to the gym or to do whatever you want. Or if you are a guy who needs high socks because you have cold in the winter, are these sports socks gonna be thicker? Yeah. Thick socks. Yeah. I’m gonna have to read the cruise socks, like the American Style Socks. We are going to launch a first, a small collection to test it, and it’s going to be mid-October.

I think they’re going to be available on the promotion, um, for Black Friday also. Yeah, I, I know exactly what I’m ordering. Yeah. [00:29:00] Good. There’s always a 10% discount on your first order, so you can test the brand and see if you like the socks. If you don’t like the socks, you just can return them. There’s no, no problem there.

Subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll receive then a confirmation and a discount code for your first order. Of 10% off. Yeah. I have a special discount code for all the fans of Break Fix. It’s break fix 2021. So we just put the code on checkout on the, on the checkout and get 20% off. That’s awesome. Thank you.

It’s not cumulative with without a promotion. So when we run the Black Friday promotion, you cannot use. Sorry. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. But we very much appreciate that. So if you haven’t ordered heel tread socks yet, this is your opportunity to get in on that and check out the designs and really show off your motorsports pride and your enthusiasm about different brands or things that you really geek out upon.

So 20% off. Thank you very much, Gonzalo. That’s very, very generous. Thank you for that. Mm. Designed and produced in Portugal. Heel tread uses seamless toe knitting to [00:30:00] create a sock without any stitches. 80% combined cotton, 17% polyamide, and 3% elastin. Every sock is beautiful inside and out. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to drop Genal align@infohealtread.com or follow them on social media at Heal Tread.

That’s. H E E L T R E A D. And more importantly, if you have an idea for a new design or want to create the perfect gift, send them an email with a design or inspiration you’d like them to work with@designheeltread.com. So Genal, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. I mean, like I said, this is super awesome because as Petrolheads, we do try a.

To find a way to share our enthusiasm with others, whether it be shoes, watches, socks, hoodies, all these kinds of things where we wanna show off and get people talking about, well, tell me about this car. Tell me about this race. Why is that important? You know? And then we get excited about it. We get to share that passion with others.

[00:31:00] And for us here at G T M, that’s super important because that’s part of our mantra, that’s part of what we do, is to continue to spread motor sport’s enthusiasm. So as much as you thanked us, we wanna thank you for being part of Motorsports. History being part of the automotive world and being able to share this with everyone.

Thank you. It’s, it’s been my pleasure. It’s been a, a hell of a ride from the last four years. Yeah, absolutely. And congratulations and good luck on the next four years and beyond, and we’re looking forward to all those new designs. Sign me up. Sure. Thank you.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt [00:32:00] motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[00:33:00]

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