Sydney Sock Project

Scaling a side hustle to a $6m+ social enterprise with ShipStation

When Andres Herrero, founder of Sydney Sock Project, began selling socks at Bondi Markets in 2018, he never imagined it would grow beyond a side hustle. As an Environmental Engineering student at the University of Wollongong, he was looking for something to do on the weekends and was driven by a natural entrepreneurial instinct.

“I’ve always had a bit of a knack for business and caught that bug early in life,” he recalls. A trip to India that same year changed everything. There, he first learned about social enterprises, sparking an idea that would shape his business. “I read that socks were one of the most requested items in homeless shelters, and it all clicked,” Andres says. “I knew that if I ever started a business, it had to have a social impact.”

With limited capital, selling socks was an affordable starting point. He launched Sydney Sock Project with a simple mission: for every pair sold, another would be donated to someone in need. His mother played a key role from the very beginning, helping him pack orders and work the markets. After a year of juggling his business and a corporate job, Andres took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, teaching himself everything from Facebook ads to building a website through YouTube tutorials. As he expanded online, Andres stayed committed to giving back, donating 10% of all sales to charities like the Children’s Cancer Institute and WIRES.

Fast forward to today, what began as a humble market stall has grown into a thriving business making a positive social impact, projected to reach $6-7 million in 2025 and making over half a million donations to date.

The brand’s breakthrough came when a bee-themed sock collection in partnership with Save the Bees Australia went viral on social media. “I ran an ad for it, and orders started rolling in — first five a day, then 10, then 20,” Andres says. By 2021, the company was processing 28 shipments daily, and within months, that number tripled.

“I set small, meaningful goals. Hitting 50 orders was a milestone, then 100. If I got close, say to 98 pairs, I’d ask my mum to call her friends to help push the numbers a little further and hit the target!” Andres recalls.

In the early days, Andres managed fulfillment manually. “Money was tight, so I had to carefully plan every dollar of profit. I used the cheapest apps I could find to manage fulfillment.” He initially relied on Addition, which connected to Australia Post, but the process wasn’t sustainable for long-term growth. “I was entering customer details and printing labels one by one. It was slow, glitchy, and prone to mistakes,” Andres shares.

As demand surged and orders piled up, fellow entrepreneurs recommended ShipStation and in 2021, he made the switch. Immediately, ShipStation’s seamless integration with Shopify and multiple carriers, including Sendle and Australia Post, streamlined operations. With orders increasing to up to 260 per day, what once took hours now only needed a few clicks — ShipStation automatically triggered orders, created labels, and sent tracking notifications, freeing Andres to focus on scaling.

Sydney Sock Project quickly outgrew its humble beginnings in Andres’ parents’ spare bedroom, first moving into a double garage and then into a dedicated warehouse with three employees. “ShipStation is intuitive enough that you can very easily teach someone in the warehouse who may not be familiar with complex software. I can get them up and running in just one or two hours, which is amazing,” he says.

As the business grew, it went from occupying just four shelves to 13 in the warehouse and picking items from different locations quickly became chaotic. ShipStation’s batch-picking feature helped organise warehouse locations, so the team can now print a pick list in the order of the warehouse layout. “This has made picking so much more efficient. Before, staff were running back and forth across aisles, which was incredibly time-consuming,” Andres explains.

Switching to ShipStation also enabled the warehouse team to batch print up to 500 orders at once, cutting down the need for extra staff for shipping. “As our volume quadrupled, those time savings became critical because I didn’t want my workload to quadruple with it,” Andres shares.

Another major efficiency booster was the introduction of ShipStation’s Rate Shopper, which compares rates across multiple carriers to select the most cost-effective options. This feature alone has saved the team 45 minutes a day, which adds up to a phenomenal 11,000 minutes a year.

Custom packing slips with Sydney Sock Project’s branding were another game-changer. Previously, the team had to generate packing slips in Shopify and labels in ShipStation separately. Now, the process is seamless, saving time while improving branding and readability; Andres jokes this has meant his mum no longer needs her glasses when she’s helping out.

One of Andres’ favourite features is ShipStation’s ability to automatically hold pre-orders. “We’ve adopted a business model where we release eight to 10 products, ordering around 1,000 units of each and testing them through marketing channels like Meta ads. Once we identify the best sellers, we can order larger quantities and still pre-sell them. This way, we avoid sitting in a cash flow limbo.”

In his first year with ShipStation, between November 2021 and November 2022, Andres shipped over 4,700 orders. Just two years later,  Sydney Sock Project smashed that number in November 2024 during the Black Friday sales season alone — doubling its entire first-year volume in just one month.

His advice for other e-commerce entrepreneurs? “Adopt ShipStation early. It’s an affordable option that scales with your business as you grow.”

Sydney Sock Project’s next big milestone is an ambitious one — making a million donations by the end of 2025. Andres adds: “We’ve already hit half a million, and I want to reach that goal before I turn 30. It’s a personal goal I’m very passionate about.”