One clever strategy helps to raise millions in your business

Innovative startups aren’t required to reinvent the wheel.

Quite often, the most brilliant ideas are hiding in plain sight, just waiting for an enterprising entrepreneur to push them to success. However, simply having that great idea is no guarantee of success.

90% of startups fail.

Among the top reasons businesses don’t make it is that they expand too fast. Doing too many things at once or trying to be everything to everyone can lead to the death of a successful business.

But you don’t just want to know what you might be doing wrong. There’s much to be learned from successful businesses, as well. Thousands of ideas are waiting to elevate business.

Meet Stance who is influence many budding entrepreneurs out there.

One of those inspirational success stories is that of Stance. Although they’ve been in business for six years, chances are you haven’t heard of them. No, they’re not a household name, but I can give you $86 million good reasons to sit up and take notice of their unusual — and incredibly successful — business strategy.

See, Stance was a socks startup. That’s right… their revolutionary idea was to sell one of the most boring products on the planet: socks. In an era where entrepreneurs compete to outdo one another in pushing technological advancements, Stance’s co-founders said, you know what? We’re just going to take this boring, utilitarian thing over here and make it awesome. We’re going to make socks sexy and exciting.

And did they ever?

In April, Stance inked a deal to be NBA’s official on-court sock. They even have a Rhianna sock line Perusing their site, you’ll see they have all different colors, styles, lengths, patterns, collaborations, and designs… yet all they’re selling is socks.

They don’t want to become another Walmart. They aren’t even aiming to be an all-encompassing clothing line or fashion house and are just now cautiously entering the underwear market. Right now, they’re just selling kickass socks — and a lot of them.

Jeff Kearl, a co-founder of Stance, revealed in a recent interview with Fast Company‘s Evie Nagy that he wanted to match brands who attracted huge early investments by developing one hero product that did superbly well. He didn’t even know what that product was but was determined to find it anyway.

That meant going to Target to study different types of products–sunblock, school supplies, jewelry, and the like–and Googling to find out gross margins and market shares and where stuff was being made. But it was when he went down the sock aisle, overflowing with basic, basic brown, black, white, and gray socks in boring plastic bags and that his inspiration was piqued.

Kearl talked to John Wilson in 2009, even though Wilson thought his friend must have been joking, that this was his big ideas. Three other cofounders joined them and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the past four years, Stance has sold over 15 million pairs of socks, almost exclusively through its retail partnerships. This past January, they began raising funding to expand into another seemingly full and already-established market.

Some backers even sought to expand the round to $80 million. However, Stance still had at its disposal the first $36 million raised. They plan to open six retail locations by next spring.

Sometimes, doing something unusual does not mean tackling so innovative. Being weird with a solid mindset simply means reinventing an existing product and making it better than before. That process intrigue us.

Stance’s epic win in the sock market should give heart and hope to entrepreneurs looking not to invent the wheel, but alluring the business.