Fox River Mills has been providing America with durable American-made socks for over 115 years.
Founded in 1900 to make warm socks for lumberjacks and explorers, Fox River Mills is now a leader in outdoor, athletic, and lifestyle sock technology, incorporating new high tech fibers, state-of-the-art equipment, and progressive designs to its socks and manufacturing facilities.
And Fox River — also home to the world-famous original sock monkey — has kept it Made in America throughout its long history, producing all of its socks in Osage, Iowa.
“Manufacturing [in Iowa] used to be as common as agriculture, but now a place like Fox River Socks is more of a novelty,” said President John Lessard in an interview that featured them as an “Iowa Icon”.
Fox River was originally based out of the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin, but moved to Osage in the 1970s after a company it had acquired, Marr Knitting Company, burned down. Fox River saw an opportunity to provide jobs to the community and immediately built a new factory, where they are still located today.
Lessard’s family bought the company in 1940’s and Fox River currently employs 300 members of the Osage community.
Those employees knit 1,400 socks per day with the help of state of the art machinery. It only takes six minutes to make a sock, which then goes through an organic shrink treatment. After the shrink treatment, the socks are paired and packaged to be shipped.
Lessard said he is grateful to be able to keep Fox River’s 250,000-square-foot factory in Osage because of the town’s community of workers. A large number of the people who work at the facility would have to relocate if it wasn’t for Fox River, and Lessard is happy that Fox River can contribute to the community in such a large capacity.
Lessard attributes his company’s success to the fact that it produces socks for an eclectic range of activities, from skiing and snowboarding to special socks made for nurses and mountain climbers.
Fox River provides free socks to members of the military stationed overseas through generous donations.
The company started its Fox River Socks for Soldiers program after it received emails from soldiers who shared how much of a difference their socks had made in their service. Since the inception of the program, Fox River has sent thousands of socks overseas.
You can help — check out soldiers’ wish lists here.