Gold Toe Brands

Gold Toe Brands, Inc., is the third largest United States-based producer of socks. It makes more than half of the men's dress socks sold in department stores in the United States and produces more than 140 million pairs of socks annually. Gold Toe socks are on the American Podiatric Medical Association's approved list of brands for foot health.

The firm began operations as Great American Knitting Mills in Bally, Pennsylvania, during the early twentieth century. Three young immigrants arrived in the United States during the early part of the twentieth century. They were Fritz S. Stern, Fritz Bendheim and J. Kugleman. The company was founded on September 8, 1919. In 1923, Rudolf Abrams, a cousin to Fritz Stern's wife, joined the company. During the Great Depression it began manufacturing men's dress socks with a toe made from high quality Irish linen, which made their product more resistant to holes and fraying than ordinary socks. In the 1930s, a department store buyer informed company management that these durable socks were popular, but customers had difficulty distinguishing the product from its competitors. So the manufacturer added gold acetate thread to the toes of its socks in order to make it visually distinctive on store shelves. Katya Andresen and Kate (FRW) Roberts, authors of Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes, call this branding decision "a stroke of genius" and credit it for the firm's dominant position in its niche market: "Go to a leading department store today, and you can see why. In a sea of black and blue men's dress socks, Gold Toe practically leaps off the display shelves." The manufacturer changed its name to Gold Toe Brands Inc. in 2002. In 2009, Gold Toe worked with Washington, D.C., based marketing and design company, Unison Agency, to recreate their online retail platform.

The following year they partnered with advertising agency DeVito/Verdi to create an integrated campaign to revitalize and contemporize the iconic brand.

GTB Holding Corp holds the trademark licensing rights to the Sanforization process of pre-shrinking fabric, named for its inventor, Sanford L. Cluett, who developed the process for Cluett Peabody & Company, which he joined in 1919.

Gold Toe merged with later competitor Moretz in 2006 to form GoldToeMoretz. Gildan Activewear acquired the company in 2011. The following year they partnered with advertising agency, DeVito/Verdi, to create an integrated campaign to revitalize and contemporize the iconic brand.

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