Chinese immigrant quit her US job to start fashion blog. Now, her company makes Rs 11 crore a year

In 2020, Mary Gui launched Sock Candy in Los Angeles and began to sell sheer socks with bright patterns. (Image credit: Sock Candy/Instagram)

Mary Gui was seven when she immigrated from Beijing to the US with her single mother. Gui was strongly pushed to pursue a stable career, so she studied marketing in school and worked at “really big” agencies and even got a full-time marketing job at a pharmaceutical company. But deep down, what Gui really wanted to work on was fashion.

“I had also tried to apply to fashion jobs during this time, entry-level fashion jobs [and] advertising agencies that had fashion accounts,” Gui told CNBC Make It. “I just never heard back from anyone, probably because I didn’t have a fashion degree or anything on my resume to indicate that I would be a good fit.”

So, she took a leap of faith and quit her job to launch a fashion blog in 2016. “It was really, for me, sort of like a Hail Mary,” Gui said. “I don’t know how else to get into the fashion industry, other than trying to pursue fashion blogging.” In 2020, she launched Sock Candy in Los Angeles and began to sell sheer socks with bright patterns. In 2024, it raked in more than Rs 11 crore in revenue last year, with over Rs 3.2 crore in profit.

Speaking about how she got into the business of socks, Gui said that while blogging on fashion, she posted her daily outfits, and readers took note of her “cute” and “fun” socks more than anything else. So, she launched Sock Candy after creating 10 sock patterns with three freelance designers.

Gui said that each pair of socks costs her about Rs 260 to manufacture at a Chinese factory, and she sells them for about Rs 1,540.

Commenting on how the new tariffs are going to affect her business, Gui told CNBC Make It she would keep working with her Chinese manufacturer, and have the goods shipped by sea to combat some of the extra charges. Sock Candy will absorb all remaining costs for the time being, she added.