South Jordan—Harrison Mitchell was walking through a department store in 2014 when he realized something strange. While it was in style to create plenty of colorful, interesting socks for men, there were very few similarly fun socks for women. This disparity led him to create ladies’ sock brand Woven Pear—a company focused on what Mitchell calls “bright and comfortable socks that make you really happy.”

Woven Pear’s socks are designed for both comfort and style. The patterns are all created in-house, dyed and dipped by hand, and many have words scripted across the bottom of the foot: “foxy lady” on fox-printed socks, “quack” on duck socks, “long ride” on the bicycle-printed pair. Mitchell teamed up with Melanie Burk and Alma Loveland, designers who have worked together before in such ventures as Caravan Shoppe, to create Woven Pear’s distinctive look.

“A lot of them are just uplifting and fun words, and they make you feel really happy when you’re wearing them,” said Mitchell. “We literally sit in a room; we toss out ideas of things we think will be trending or trends we can create. The narwhal [patterns] have been a super good seller for us. We thought it’d be a good pattern—but they’ve gone crazy. We get samples, we think of really fun names. It’s really a brand that’s fun to follow and be a part of. We have a good time, we really do.”

The socks are made of 58 percent woven cotton, 22 percent nylon, 16 percent polyester and 4 percent spandex, a combination which makes for a stretchy sock that doesn’t slide down the calf. There’s no sizing at Woven Pear, as the fabric allows for the sock to fit a size 6 on up. “It’s really stretchy and soft. They can fit me and I’m a size 13,” said Mitchell. “You can throw them in the dryer and they’ll maintain their sizing.”

Woven Pear is celebrating its first birthday this week, and the first year of business has exploded beyond Mitchell’s expectations. He’s been impressed with the engagement Woven Pear has gotten on social media, where the company regularly involves its fans in giveaways, production questions and sneak peeks. Many of their styles have already sold out, despite customers continually asking for restocks.

“The response has been incredible. We are growing extremely fast,” said Mitchell. “We can’t keep them in stock! We keep reordering and they keep selling out.”

As of now, Mitchell is expecting the next batch of re-stock in April, although he says the brand is going to start moving toward limited edition patterns instead of relying on old favorites. Woven Pear has a number of new products in various stages of development in the pipeline—the spring line will be slowly unveiled over the course of March, and Mitchell says there are plans for a monthly subscription box (with limited-edition prints available only to subscribers—the first round will be themed ‘April Showers’, he says), as well as a no-show and children’s line. Mitchell also says that there will be birthday celebration events unfolding throughout the week, on their website and social media.

“The engagement [on social media] has been crazy. We’re only a year old and the response [has been incredible],” he said. “[Woven Pear] was really created for the 18-35 year old range, but it’s been kind of funny to see some tweens going crazy over it, too. Socks are really hot right now, and there’s nobody that’s focusing on this particular demographic. We found a really good niche.”