How Bombas Built a Fancy Socks Empire With $500 Million in Sales
More than a decade after their Shark Tank appearance, the company’s co-founders have successfully pushed into T-shirts, slippers and undergarments.
Bombas co-founders Randy Goldberg and Dave Heath.
Photographer: Erin Patrice O’Brien for Bloomberg BusinessweekWhen Dave Heath and Randy Goldberg met in 2007, “it could have gone one of two ways,” Heath says. “Either best friends or archnemeses.” They worked together at UrbanDaddy, a New York City lifestyle website, at desks so close their seats touched whenever they leaned back. Heath loudly sold ads on the phone all day, right in Goldberg’s ear—just “smiling and dialing,” Heath says—while Goldberg was trying to focus on editing stories about Manhattan nightlife, at times procured by reporters in disguise scoping out the city’s next hot spots.
Their relationship survived the tight quarters. Heath and Goldberg became best friends—and, more surprisingly, sock moguls.