Meet Drew Shaw of Voyce Threads

Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Shaw.

Drew, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a small town in North Carolina and moved to Phoenix, AZ in 2005 after graduating with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel with double majors in International Studies and Romance Languages. Teach For America afforded me the opportunity to teach in one of Phoenix’s most underserved communities in west Phoenix.

The experience as an elementary school teacher, teaching 3-5th grades over the course of six years, was challenging and rewarding – and shaped my worldview about how education is the key to changing the world. After six years, I accepted a position to work for a gift-funded project at Arizona State University’s Teacher College. I took on many roles while there – innovating recruitment practices by the Teachers College, teaching senior level courses, marketing products, and training community stakeholders on the resources my team created.

After four and a half years there, I left ASU and started my own education consulting company, Acumen Learning Innovations. We focused on increasing teacher instructional effectiveness, cultivating team culture at school sites, and coaching groups and individual teachers on best practices. Simultaneously, I worked on a turning a writing project into a book.

In June of 2017, I released my first book in a series of children’s books Rosewood Circle: The First Day. The book chronicled the first days of school for a quirky 3rd grader named David Spencer. In the book, David wears mismatched socks. This sparked the idea of pairing the book with a line of kids’ socks that were mismatched.

After some thought, I decided to make the sock concept something more socially-conscious and impactful. I went through a social venture incubator called Seed Spot, and I refined my idea, making my entire concept a community-focused endeavor. In addition, I was accepted into Valley Leadership, a leadership program, where I not only met some inspiring and influential people but also experienced touring dozens of community nonprofits and the state’s infrastructure.

This informed my vision for my sock company, and how I could galvanize consumers to support local causes. After a year and a half, I launched Voyce Threads on November 17, 2018. Voyce Threads is a socially conscious lifestyle brand that brings awareness to important causes by designing mismatched socks that are inspired by the work of charitable organizations. We want to cause meaningful, issues-focused conversations through the apparel we create.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been an easy road. My expertise lies in education and nonprofit issues. Delving into the fashion and retail landscape was extremely challenging and required lots of research, which included late nights where sleep was elusive due to the hundreds of questions I had no answers for.

While I had started other companies, this venture was on a different scale. I had to learn about manufacturing, supply chain, and e-commerce. With my lack of formal business education, I relied on my community and my tenacity to find the answers.

With my lack of experience, it was difficult to convince nonprofits to partner with Voyce Threads upfront with nothing to use as a proof point for my company’s business success. I’m sure my proposal seemed too good to be true or that I was selling them “snake oil.”

Thankfully, I cultivated a strong network of friends in key organizations, and that allowed me to design my first set of socks. Funding is always an issue for any start-up. I used my personal funds to start the company, but it proved to be difficult to maintain after the launch.

Please tell us about Voyce Threads.
Voyce Threads connects every product, socks, to a different cause, which is disruptive in the for-profit/non-profit relationship space. You will usually find companies that donate to a single cause. We use our design capabilities to design unique socks for each organization we partner with

Additionally, most companies simply donate money back to organizations or provide a product to a cause every time a customer purchases a product. We focus on telling the organization’s story via our various platforms.

So, we put less emphasis on giving the money back to the partnering charitable organization and concentrate on bringing awareness to their work by using mismatched socks as the vehicle to start conversations. There are no other companies that have this business model.

Is there a quality or characteristic that has played an outsized role in your success?
We are all about building relationships with the community. Our business model will not work without the support of the charitable organizations and the people who support them. We treasure every single community partnership we establish and spend a considerable amount of time developing compelling stories for each one.

We offer our partners a way to reach a new audience of potential supporters through a very novel item, mismatched socks. Our partners have a real need, and we are able to fulfill that need in a creative way.

Pricing:

• $16 per pair of socks

Contact Info:

• Website: www.voycethreads.com
• Phone: 800-738-6715
• Email: voyce@voycethreads.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/voycethreads
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/voycethreads
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/voycethreads
• Other: LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/company/voyce-threads

Image Credit:
Mike Schmidt, Stewart Jones

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.