I write this before Sockible has a product, before our first design and before anyone even knows about the business, but I want to start blogging to give you, our future customer a look at how this company came to be.
My name is Brandon Saltalamacchia, I am currently the founder of a small media company called Click Hill Limited, I create content brands about my passions: retro gaming and trading cards. Ever since I was a child I have loved collecting things.
As a child my bedroom was filled with TY Beanie Babies, Pokemon cards, video games, Tamagotchis, magazines, boneheads, Tazoos and LEGO. I was obsessed with finding rare toys, trading them with friends and collecting full sets of anything pop culture related.
This passion has stayed with me throughout my career, forcing me into the video games industry when I was a young man. While working for startups and media companies for many years I had an urge to start my own project, a website about retro video games.
I took the risky leap of leaving my full time job to pursue building a content brand in 2019 called Retro Dodo, and over the last few years it has become the world’s leading retro gaming news publication.
In 2023 we built our second content business known as Card Gamer which shares news, reviews and original stories about trading and collectible card games.
It was all going well until Google changed their algorithms in September 2023 which obliterated our entire business, reducing revenue by 90% in just a few months. I was heartbroken. The business I had been building for 5 years had been pulled from underneath me, all happening while my first child Rowan was being born.
It was an incredibly stressful time and as I write this it still is. Today in fact I found out that my business is now losing money, meaning I unfortunately have to let most of my team go. I am living through one of the most stressful times of my life right now.
I am trying to keep my business from being destroyed, I am learning how to become a good father, and I am trying to support my family financially while my partner is off on maternity.
With this change, I have had to take some time to really sit down with myself and think about what I want to do with my life, what kind of business I want to build and how my work impacts the planet as my son grows old. With this time to reflect, I went back to an old book that I love, it’s called Ikagai.
This book explains the Japanese secret to a happy life, and how one of the important pillars of happiness is giving back. Deep down I thoroughly enjoy that act of giving, I believe it’s a human instinct to want to help in some way, even if it is small.
I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t want this business to make money, which may contradict the mission of this business, but I do want to give my family a good life, a secure life away from financial stress. We don’t need a lot, in fact we are very happy on small incomes, and always have been, but giving my son the basic needs, and an exciting life is a top priority for me.
It’s an incredibly important part of this business, because selfishly… this gives me a lot of fulfilment and I believe it will give me a strong sense of meaning too, something my previous businesses and work has lacked.
I also want my son to experience how the business gives back as he grows old. I think it would be incredibly wise to show him how his father is trying to help the world because deep down I do want my son to do the same in any shape or form when he is an adult, big or small.
I have a vision of bringing him a long on this journey over the coming years, showing him our impact and showing him a side of the world that the media blocks out.
The planet needs our help more than ever, so I want to give back more than I have taken from this wonderful round rock that we live on. I’m not saying our socks will change the world, but if it helps a tiny bit then I am all in.
Building businesses is another passion of mine, ever since the jump in 2019 the excitement, the challenge and the unknown lights a fire in me. I love studying digital marketing, learning search engine optimisation, designing brands and building niche communities. In the book Ikagai it tells you to combine four important questions to find your Ikagai:
- What do you love doing?
- What does the world need?
- What are you good at?
- What can you be paid for?
I believe this business is my Ikagai, my calling to craft a happy, and fulfilling life while helping the planet. I honestly have no clue what I am doing, but I have a vision and that vision is what i’ll chase.
But first, I must design a product, find the perfect factory to produce these socks and start planning the collectible side of our sets. I also need to figure out a content strategy before launch!
This is going to be a long road, but one I am excited to travel down, and I would love for you to follow our journey, as I am going to be 100% transparent with our readers here, showing them the good, the bad and the ugly.
Documenting our journey on our social platforms is another big part for this brand, I want to show you exactly where your donations go, how we will build the business and what were up to as transparently as possible.
