Bombas built a company around the one donation item shelters actually run out of

Homeless shelters receive a steady stream of donated coats, blankets and canned food — the items donors instinctively think of when picturing what someone without a home needs most. But shelter staff consistently identified something different as their most requested and least-supplied item: socks, a low-cost, unglamorous item nobody thinks to donate but that wears out and gets discarded daily, with no durable substitute the way a coat or blanket can be reused indefinitely.

Simply donating more of what people already donate wouldn't fix a shortage that existed precisely because everyone's charitable instinct pointed at the same handful of items; the actual gap was invisible to anyone who wasn't asking the shelters themselves what they ran out of.

Co-founders Randy Goldberg and David Heath built Bombas around that specific, overlooked gap: a sock company operating on a one-for-one model, donating a pair of socks — and later underwear and t-shirts — to homeless shelters and related charities for every item a customer purchased.

Built a sock company on one-for-one donations, targeting the specific, recurring shortage shelters face because socks wear out constantly, unlike coats or blankets.

Socks wear out and get discarded constantly, creating a recurring shortage that one-time drives can't fix.

Asking shelters directly revealed socks as the most requested and least supplied item, invisible to donor instinct.

The one-for-one model turned each purchase into a recurring donation, aligning business with the actual need.

Ask the end recipient what they actually lack, not what donors assume they need; the gap between assumed and stated need is often an underserved niche.

By 2023, Bombas had generated more than $1.3 billion in lifetime retail sales and donated more than 100 million essential apparel items to people experiencing homelessness, becoming, among other milestones, the top-selling product in the history of Shark Tank, the show that gave the company early exposure.