Socks, Speed, and Storytelling: Behind the Scenes with Heel Tread

Goncalo Henriques - Co-Founder at Heel Tread, Curator and Stereo Socks for Heel Tread

In September 2017 I founded Heel Tread and I'm fully dedicated to this project. Heel Tread is a brand of socks Inspired by passions, from music to cars, creating a solid emotional connection with our products.

Contact: Goncalo Henriques at info@heeltread.com | N/A | Visit Online!

             

• What’s the inspiration behind the brand? What’s the Origin Story of Heel Tread?
• What kinds of products does Heel Tread offer?
• What was the first design produced by Heel Tread?
• What are your top-3 favorite designs?
• What’s the strangest inspiration/design HT has been asked to produce?
• HT is celebrating their 4th anniversary and we’ve been following HT for years (check our IG for real-life examples of GTM’ers wearing HT apparel), and in the last 2, you’ve moved from Automobiles and Motorsports; introduced Motorcycles… and now Airplanes? Why? and What’s next?

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know how many times I’ve been getting ready for a presentation and someone has leaned over to me in a conference room and said, isn’t that the GTI plaid? Or where did you get those socks? Let’s face it, socks are the new tie.

Portugal based heel tread is a unique brand of socks that draws its inspiration from motor sports and aircraft. Their collection pays tribute to some of the world’s most renowned automotive icons. And so with us today is John Slo Enriquez, head of SOC Affairs [00:01:00] at Heel Tread to talk to us about one of our favorite fashionista accessories.

Socks. Welcome to Break Fix Gonzalo. Uh, thank you. So, I have to say, many of us here at GTM, myself included, have been wearing heel tread gear for many years, and we absolutely love it. I happen to be wearing my Sena socks today. Oh, great. So let’s, let’s talk about the inspiration behind the brand. What’s the origin story of Heel T?

Gonçalo Henriques: Well, actually the first idea was to do socks with no drawings on it. So I’m 43. When I launched the brand, I was 40. I love colorful socks with bold patterns and colors, but the market only showed us pineapples, cherries, and things that only kids should wear, and I’m not comfortable doing that. So. That was the first idea.

So socks are the new ties as you told, and there’s a big market to explore. But then my partner Joan, just got in the project and we are two real big petrol heads, motorbikes, cars, everything. So the thing is there’s so much color and so much [00:02:00] patterns and so many levers that we can inspire on that. We wanted to do our first collection inspired by cars only the first collection.

And the thing worked so, so, so, so well. Okay. This, this deserves a brand just for this, and the options are infinite. So there’s so many cool cars and every year there’s so many new cars that are launched. So we have, let’s say, material to work for 10, 15, 20 years. So there’s a, a big market. So that was the first one year socks without drawings, and then socks inspired by cars.

So what was the first design produced by Hill

Crew Chief Eric: Tread?

Gonçalo Henriques: Well, the first two ones were the, the Porsche RSR, the martini livery, and the E 30 with the BMW Motorsports ones. It was the easiest ones, and actually one of the, still one

Crew Chief Eric: of the best sellers today. It just happens to be similar thread colors too. So that made it kind of easy to change the design, huh?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, and uh, the stripes of of the E 30 are just so easy to do. It’s, it’s our coolest. So I love them. I still love them. I still wear them, uh, every time I have the opportunity.

Crew Chief Eric: Before we dive a little bit deeper and geek out on the [00:03:00] heel tread designs and whatnot, let’s tell our audience what kind of products that heel tread offers.

Is it just socks? Is there something else? Are there other themed items? For

Gonçalo Henriques: now,

Crew Chief Eric: we offer

Gonçalo Henriques: socks, regular socks, and low socks. We launched last year, a polo line. We have. Three Polo Designs. We launched also a key ring collection. We are now on the fine tuning of launching some underwear and potentially sunglasses.

So any tips on that would be really good. And if you have any ideas you can share with us, just drop us an email and all feedback is very important

Crew Chief Eric: for us. Going back and talking about the designs a little bit, what were your top. Three favorite designs of all the ones that you’ve put out so far?

Gonçalo Henriques: Actually, one is the GTA, the Alpha Romeo. It’s not one of our top sales, but I just love the details of the, all the headlights and, and the grill and the colors of the sock. They’re really cool for the nine 30 pack, the plate seats, we just got one that was, uh, a tartan from [00:04:00] Magnus Walker that he used in one of his cars.

And actually was that the, was that the

Crew Chief Eric: Pasha socks?

Gonçalo Henriques: No, no, not the Pasha. We, it’s, it’s a nine 30 pack inspired on the plate seats that got out on the nine 30 Turbo for the first time and there’s five or six and we got one that’s not period, correct. Sorry for all the purists, but we just got it from Magnus Walker and it’s a really.

Yellow, blue, green. Very cool pattern. And the socks are really amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Actually are my, my favorites. Yeah, because the Pasha ones, a lot of people don’t realize are Porsche inspired as well. Those come from the 9 28, if I recall.

Gonçalo Henriques: Exactly. Exactly. And there’s some other crazy, the Pasha, the pepita. We have a category just seats.

We have the, the seats from the first M three, also the roof CT one. The, the Yellowbird. So there’s so many cool patterns from seats that we can be inspired in, in that, and, and that’s endless. Also, the

Crew Chief Eric: GTA, the outro male, the Tartan Pack from Magnus Walker. Is there a third favorite in there? Top three.

Gonçalo Henriques: I also love, actually, it’s not my idea, but the VM Max socks from Arcade [00:05:00] game.

From, uh, outrun. Outrun. Yeah. Outrun socks are really cool. Actually love them. I forgot the pink pig because they’re my daughter’s favorite. They, she’s always asking when, when I’m wearing the, the pink pig socks because she loves pink. Yeah. Actually, it’s a fun story. We launched the pink pig. We weren’t very confident about the success.

I actually have a bed with my partner. We have a very expensive dinner, and if we sold, I don’t know, I don’t recall how many pairs in the first day. The one who lost would pay a dinner to the other one, and by noon we already broke that record. So it was a real, real success. So the pink pig, it’s, it’s actually not a, that famous car, but.

We actually love them. It has a very cool story behind it. I think every car, there’s a very cool story behind it has a space on on our collection.

Crew Chief Eric: Funny you mentioned that because I know a bunch of people in our organization that did order those socks and additionally Porsche resurrected that livery a couple years ago in the nine 11 RSR.

So I think your timing was perfect because people, people were seeing that car at LeMans and IMSA races, et cetera. So [00:06:00] I think it was actually right on the nose in terms Yeah, we were

Gonçalo Henriques: lucky.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, we were lucky. Do these favorite designs. Coincide with your personal favorite vehicles. If not, what are your top three favorite cars?

Gonçalo Henriques: I’m a big Porsche fan actually. My favorite car, the car that I had as, as a poster when I was a kid was a a 9 9 3 forest durable look. That’s my favorite car. Very expensive. My favorite supercar is the, the McLaren F1. It’s the only supercar I like. Actually, if I would be very, very rich, I would be ordering a new garden Maret car.

The T 50, the T, the garden MA T 50. It’s so, so cool, and I think they’re going to launch a simple version with less a o because he has a big fan and it’s, it’s a crazy super car, a simple one, just a V 12 natural aspirator. That’s, that’s the kind of cars I really love. I love the, the alpha, the GTI, the alcoholics one.

For me, it would be a dream car also. That’s the new

Crew Chief Eric: EV alpha, correct? The retro model? No, no,

Gonçalo Henriques: no, no, no. It’s a retro model. It’s not the ev It’s, it’s one done by alcoholics. It’s about [00:07:00] $300 power. It costs 200,000 euros or more than that. There’s an a new one, an ev not from the same guys. These are British guys.

There’s a very cool Chris Es video that you need to see on YouTube of him driving the alcoholics and, and actually there’s a top gear episode that they went back and got the car from the last season. So it’s a really purist green and drives manual shift and just. Big engine. That’s,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s awesome.

That’s awesome. Yeah,

Gonçalo Henriques: that’s,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s thing. So do you go to the track? Do you have a race car or anything like that?

Gonçalo Henriques: No. Oh, okay. Actually, I, I love cars. I love riding them on the streets or I’m not the track guy. I actually, my biggest motor sport obvious is just off-roading, dirt biking. That’s the biggest fun you can have with the lowest risk of getting injured.

I did some track days. We sponsored a CRE and, and I did a, a three day course or training and actually it was a lot of fun. I like drifting. I’m not the guy with a, with a stopwatch just wanting to shave half a second every lap. I like to have fun driving [00:08:00] cars to drift, to do something different to, that’s why I like more off-road that you can do more of that.

You cannot go rallying in the streets. It’s too complicated. So offroading is the only thing available to do that kind of, of riding over driving,

Crew Chief Eric: even though, is there one race car or maybe two that you would just turn over everything to get behind the wheel of? Is it an alpha male, like the 1 55? No, I would love to be

Gonçalo Henriques: in

Crew Chief Eric: the DTM

Gonçalo Henriques: car.

It, it would be a, a, a rally car. I think it would be the, the Quatro or I think it would be an rally or a Subaru. They call it McElroy one? Yeah, absolutely. Actually that thing, it’s, it would be definitely, ah, there’s one car I would give everything to have, uh, you know, the, the last singer, nine 11, the off-road one with total Porsche.

I would sell everything. Do you know the movie where it’s actually to, um, I don’t know if it’s 30 or two, Porsche, the CEO that’s really driving the car in the beach and everything. That’s what I want. I would love to do. [00:09:00] That’s the, that’s awesome. The coolest. That’s the coolest thing I saw in the last 10 years.

That I really, that’s my, my kind of car. Yeah. Actually, I love everything. Delivery. The colors, the, the noise, the, that’s it. Yeah. And we gotta get

Crew Chief Eric: socks to go with it. Right. So, you know, we always say petrol heads of a certain age and we’re in that similar age range where, you know, group B was a thing when we were growing up, when other certain supercar.

We weren’t in the MU generation, but we were in the Kunta and the F 40 Generation, the 9 59. You know, cars like that. Yeah. What do you think of those cars? Because you said you only liked the McLaren F1. What are your thoughts on those kind of iconic of the period Supercars? I

Gonçalo Henriques: like the 9 5 9. It’s a very cool technological essay.

I don’t think it’s a pretty car. The F 40 is just. For it. That’s, that’s should be on a museum. But cars should be, should be driven. I think it’s so stupid that you have a very expensive car and you don’t Dr. Drive it. It doesn’t make sense. But actually they’re not my favorite generation. Maybe I, I’m a little bit younger because I, I, I was a motorcycle guy until I [00:10:00] was 16.

I only like bikes and then the car passion just. Went on from there and, and when I started driving. So those cars are pre my passion, not my age, but my passion. So, but I love, I love the ash as, as I, I remember when I was a kid, I saw Lamborghini, the LM 200, the, the, the off-road one at the beach in Portugal.

I was just standing there for five minutes and saying, what the fuck is this? And it was more hardcore than a hum. And it was exactly 20, 20 years before, and it was a red one. I, I don’t, some things you don’t forget. I, I remember where it was parked in the beach. It’s beach I, I still go to, and it was just.

Unbelievable car. And that’s so, so I’m with you saw Lamborghini. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Saw I saw a white one in person and I just, the same thing. You’re just like, what am I looking at? Exactly. And then you realize the Humvee, I think took some of its inspiration from that Lamborghini. So since we’re talking about that, what do you think is the sexiest car of all time?

Gonçalo Henriques: It needs to be the Alpha Romeo, the the 33 Strada. [00:11:00] I think that’s, uh, just a, uh, an artwork with, with rubber that’s, it’s so, so beautiful from every point of view. It, it,

Crew Chief Eric: I am starting to see a theme here. You’re very much an Alpha Romeo fan, which speaks to me personally. Yeah. I am very much as well. So that’s very, very cool.

So let’s flip that on its nose. And since you’re in the eu, you’re over in Portugal, what’s the ugliest car in your opinion?

Gonçalo Henriques: Uh, gotta be the fiat multiplier. I know it’s, it’s a repeated card, but for me that’s, we don’t have the Pontiac Aztec. I think that should be the It’s the one from the us Yeah, the US equivalent of the multiplex.

Exactly. Yeah. Some strange things that got, I import from the US here, the Chrysler, I don’t remember the name. They were really, really ugly, but on top of it, they were rare in Europe, so it was a strange, sweet and sour thing. So they are so different. They could be cool, but they are really ugly at the same time.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re not gonna make any ugly socks anytime soon, huh?

Gonçalo Henriques: No, no, no, no.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe as a gag.

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, maybe [00:12:00] as a gag. We have a thing. The socks that we do need to be beautiful. Even if you don’t have a relationship with a car, they need to be socks that we find cool. So we always sometimes tweak our designs or just go a little bit off from the car.

To make the sock a, a cool sock so there’s no ugly socks. Yeah, I’m with you there. I’m thinking of doing, of doing a black sock for the hundred 17 Steal Fighter. It’s going to be all black sock. I think it’s going to be our joke for this year. Let me see.

Crew Chief Eric: That’d be pretty funny. I mean, I’m, and I’m with you there.

The socks that draw my attention the most aren’t necessarily the ones that I associate with the most now. For instance, the Land Rover ones, the Series Two Socks. I love those. I like wearing those around. Those get people’s attention. They’re very subtle, you know, light green with that squareish pattern.

Yeah. Yeah. The other one is the, uh, the nine 11 RSR, the old 72 73 early car, you know, short nose nine 11. Yeah. Those are real popular. And the GTI ones always get people’s attention ’cause they’re like, oh, that’s a very specific tartan type of pattern. And you know, it, it really gets people’s, uh, yeah,

Gonçalo Henriques: [00:13:00] GTI was our best seller.

It still is our best seller. By far, so the GTIs are really, really cool. The thing is, when we launched, it was not on our first collection and we got about 10 comments every day. Do GTI, socks do GTI. Socks do. And we took about three months to do that. And when we did, it was crazy because it’s a very, very hard pattern to knit.

It’s a very concentrated pattern, not that easy to produce. So we needed a lot of production effort, but now that we did it, it’s really, really cool. So is it more

Crew Chief Eric: difficult with designs that require a logo? Do you have to get permission for that sort of stuff? Like how does that process work when you’re doing the design of socks?

Yeah,

Gonçalo Henriques: we don’t have many official socks. We have official collaborations with some brands. We don’t like to put logos on the socks. That’s merchandising socks. If you want a Ferrari socks with the logo, you just buy them at Ferrari. That’s not what we do. We’ll have something inspired from the car. And we don’t aim to be official merchandise because that will limit our creativity.

Okay. Right. So that’s one of the issues. Yeah. We have some [00:14:00] collaborations that make sense. For example, for the, with the Low dose classic team that supported us from the beginning, from the ma, the organization. But the big brands, I don’t think that makes much sense to work with them, because if not, it’ll be a merchandise brand.

We can produce socks for them if they want, but it doesn’t make much sense on our collection.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, and I saw that we ordered the wind socks, the purple ones, when they won their class back last year or the year before, rather, you know, I could see that there’s always the potential and that’s also why, you know, some people are like, well, why don’t they make ’em.

A golf R sock, and I’m like, well, what would that look like? It would be blue with an R logo. Yeah. That’s all it would be. It wouldn’t be that exciting. Yeah. In some of the newer cars, I think it’s actually harder to pull inspiration from more modern cars because the designs are more sleek. They’re not using more outlandish.

Patterns like they did in the eighties and even in the nineties where they’re like, they wanted to get your attention with the, the plaids and the tartans and et cetera. But what would you say are some of the top trending, most popular designs at [00:15:00] heel tread outside of the ones you mentioned, like the E 30 and the GTI and things like that?

Gonçalo Henriques: Well, the, actually the load is. Send a car with a Camel logo with a low dose. 1990. It’s pretty popular right now. Airplanes are picking up Spitfire Mustang. Corsair socks are really, really selling. I think everyone who likes cars like airplanes, people like airplanes, like cars. If it has an engine. If it makes a lot of noise, I think people will always love it, and they are such, such iconic and classic patterns that it works.

Let me pull out some interesting stats from our sales from last month, the 49 socks. Also from Lotus Classic Livery, the Cena socks from inspired by the helmets. Okay. The alpha 1, 5 5 socks that I really love with, with a serpent there. They’re really, really cool. Um, I have those too. Yeah, those are really cool.

We launched the Eminence ER 0 3 7. It actually, it was a very rare car and we got permission from the owner to do his car with the license [00:16:00] plate and everything he got. Oh, that’s awesome. And he got some socks. So that’s a lot of fun. We got customers with impressive. It’s not impressive. Crazy car collection in the millions.

They just reach out and say, Hey, do you wanna do this, this car? Or just, just, they send me a picture with the socks and the car and I say, oh, that’s not real. Cars in, in the millions. And, and actually that’s one of the coolest things of working in this brand is the attention and the care that the fans or customers, whatever you want to call it, give us.

It’s, it’s really, really cool. People that love his, their cars with impressive car collection or just a simple car that just tweaked in his garage for years and years. They reach out and say, Hey, can you do the salt Inspire on this model? Do you have that one? Or just send us the pictures riding the cars.

So it’s so, it’s so, so cool. It’s very, very interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s some of the strangest inspiration, you know, really odd requests that people have made of heel trip to say, Hey, can, like you’re saying, can you make this, what are, you know, some of those top things that you’re like, well, I don’t know that we could ever do that.

Or something that people are constantly asking for that hasn’t been made yet.

Gonçalo Henriques: [00:17:00] There’s a crazy fan of ours. That was spamming our social media every freaking day, just asking for Maserati socks. And you know, doing a Maserati is not that easy because they’re so sleek. I, I love Maseratis, they’re beautiful, but, but we have the details that we needed and we cannot do just the logo that on that.

We never did it. It’s on our plan. We’ll do the Maserati mc 12 this year. Okay. So on our list. And I think it’s one of the coolest one in, and the colors are really great and a lot of Opal, I don’t know if you Opal is, is a German brand. Crazy opal fence from Germany. Didn’t just ask us for a hot hedge from the seventies and very rare opals and that, that’s a big community.

And we could, I could see, see a manta.

Crew Chief Eric: I could see some of the Ra, the opal rally cars like the cadet, the GTE and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Gonçalo Henriques: Crazy. A lot of Opal fans and especially the

Crew Chief Eric: the cadet, because didn’t Walter Rural run one of those before B got big?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah. We actually have some Audi cultural socks signed by Walter Royal.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh wow. That’s awesome. Yeah. [00:18:00] Well, that’s, so I wanted to ask you about that since you brought it up. You guys chose the S one livery, right? Or the, the E two, they call it in some circles. Why not the actual Audi Sport colors, which were brown, red, and gray.

Gonçalo Henriques: It’s Zakar, it’s, it has the same colors. It’s the R five.

You go to our website and you go for R five socks. Yeah, R 5G TO socks. But actually here in Europe, the other one is more, a lot more famous. The yellow one.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting because even Michelle Ton drove a black car for one year as well. So that was another pattern that they had, you know, back then. Yeah. It’s, it’s lesser known, but I, I was just curious like what the decision process is.

I obviously starting with the most popular ones makes the most sense. And then do you guys feel like it’s necessary to do variations on the theme and have other versions of similar periods, or do you want to just have. One iconic moment and move on and have tons of variation.

Gonçalo Henriques: It’s always a personal thing for me.

The Audi Quatro is the yellow one. The other one is the secondary delivery. Let, let’s [00:19:00] say, so for us, it was really immediate to, to do this one as long as there’s interest and if the car is a cool story behind it. We can do everything. The Eminence never, the Eminence lunch at 0 3 7. He never won anything, but it was so different and we had access to the, the driver, we did the minority also.

We had the contact with the pilot that won Grand Prix on it. It, it’s, it’s not direct directly connect with the party results of the car or with the number of fans. If there’s a cool story behind it, we’ll probably do it.

Crew Chief Eric: So are you open to a couple suggestions while we’re talking?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, sure.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright. Hear me out, I’m thinking.

Alitalia ’cause I, I bought the ST 180 5 socks going, that’s close enough. And I could, I could get away with it. Unless you’re a real petrolhead. So something Alitalia Stratos related,

Gonçalo Henriques: we actually did the first edition of the Stratos that was not so related with Alitalia. It was a more abstract and redone it.

Now. It’s really, really cool. Yeah. It’s one of our top sellers. You’ll

Crew Chief Eric: make. My sister Ali

Gonçalo Henriques: is a must. Is a must have.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. [00:20:00] Well, you’ll make my sister very happy. Then the other one, since you mentioned black socks, I was thinking about the Sonas Mercedes one 90 E, the Evo two.

Gonçalo Henriques: We had it, but it was not. Such a big seller and we discontinued, but we had it.

Oh, see,

Crew Chief Eric: see it’s, it’s, I hate to say it’s a lot like blip shift. You gotta be there at the right time and then designs appear disappear. Yeah.

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah. It’s, it is the W 2 0 1 socks. Yeah, we had, it

Crew Chief Eric: had had it past tense. If you’re going black socks, like I said now, I would also add, I would love to see. A DeLorean sock.

’cause gray, there’s not really too many gray socks in the catalog, but a, not a back to the future one. Right. A actual DeLorean. Uh,

Gonçalo Henriques: we have the back to the future one. Yeah. And that’s just so, so cool. There’s a car gathering in Germany only with movie cars. We have a picture of the socks. They have the dates and everything, like to the back to the future one, and they have a replica and we have a picture of the socks.

So, so cool. I think you can, there’s a, there’s an Instagram post about it, [00:21:00] uh, recent. You can, you can check that out.

Crew Chief Eric: And on behalf of someone else in the organization, we were talking about this before the show and I said, you know, would be really cool to have some juro or etal design inspired socks. And then she chimed up and everybody’s gonna know who this is.

She chimed up and went Fiat Panda. And I’m like, okay. Because a lot of people don’t realize this would end that car. Yeah. So Juro would be really cool, uh, if there’s anything that you could do there. Eal design, it was awesome. Obviously he’s famous for the launch of Delta, the Rocco, the rabbits, the DeLorean.

I, he’s Penn so many cars over the years. Now is, is there any. Talk about maybe US based motorsport coming to heel tread, let’s say nascar. Is there anything you guys could do there?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, it’s a shame. We did a big collection of NASCAR cars that Tide One, um, the foremost famous, and they actually, they were not big sellers even in the.

I don’t know if maybe NASCAR [00:22:00] fans are not more classic petrol heads, but it wasn’t a big success. The success actually, we discontinued all of them and the And the socks were really, really cool. Yeah. So do you

Crew Chief Eric: have a section of the website where you can see the archive socks, like designs that are no longer in production, that people could say added to a wishlist?

Then maybe you get an idea of what they would be interested in. Look at those trends. Well, that could be interesting. That could be a cool idea.

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, that’s, that’s cool. We have a lot of them because if, if not, we have just too many socks available and, and it would be very complicated to shop on the website.

We would have more than 200 designs. Actually we have about 150 now and just too complicated. But we can do that. That’s a cool idea. We just have archive and we have a lot of them cool ones that we like to relaunch for limited editions or something like that. There’s, there’s always will to do it. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: If you’re giving me the option to click and say. Let me know when this becomes available. You tally that up and you get a hundred, 200 people saying, I really want these NASCAR socks. And suddenly it’s like, well, we should probably make these and make ’em available. As we mentioned at the [00:23:00] beginning of the episode, he’ll try to celebrating its fourth anniversary and we’ve been following you guys for years and you can check out our Instagram to see examples of GTMs actually wearing heel TR apparel and et cetera.

And in the last two years, you guys have. Obviously very quickly moved from automobiles and motor sports into motorcycles that came very fast, and then now airplanes. So what’s next?

Gonçalo Henriques: Well for us, as long as it have, it has an engine and we can rev it or just go full throttle, we’ll do it. I think we have now, we launched our first boat, Riva boat.

Makes sense. It has Lamborghini engines, so it makes total sense. But I think we’ll explore more the airplanes and, and all cool cars that really work and it people appreciate it. So there’s many cool airplanes that we can do. We’ll not do airliners and, and and TWA stocks and things like that. Doesn’t make sense, sense.

No Pan am Come on. No pan am no nothing like that. We have an impressive collection of other military vehicles that make sense and, and cool stuff. We launched the, the American British [00:24:00] pacs. They have a tank four by four, an airplane in a fighter in a bomber. So they are really, really cool duplicated. You have the gyp willy socks, and I think we’ll go more that way in maybe some crazy, a little bit of the Sharks thing, but, but we’re still thinking, I think that the, the big plan for now is getting into underwear.

Sunglasses. That could be really cool. But in the socks and, and maybe polos or t-shirts, I don’t know. But we have a big list of cars that we want to do, so, and, and the fans ask for it.

Crew Chief Eric: So. So you mentioned earlier about other ideas and, and tips and now you said again, you know, underwear and polo shirts and sunglasses, but what about watches?

Gonçalo Henriques: I had that idea. I’m a big watch fan. I have a cool watch collection. I would spend all my money on cars and watches. A hundred percent. I’m

Crew Chief Eric: in agreement with you there.

Gonçalo Henriques: I thought about it and it’s actually not that complicated and interesting. The thing is, it’ll be always inspired in an Omni Speed Master or a Rolex.

Uh, and it’s, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: How

Gonçalo Henriques: could we

Crew Chief Eric: [00:25:00] do it outside of watches? That would be really cool. And right up your guys’ alley would be watch bands inspired by cars. Yeah,

Gonçalo Henriques: it could be cool. Yeah. To do a more interesting or more in-depth watch bands. I’m a big, big fan of NATO stripes and then they’re really inexpensive to buy.

I have a big collection. And it just changes your watch every day. So Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: And so a he matching heel tread watch band to go with your socks, partner it up, and you keep your watch the same. Now everybody’s standardized 20 millimeter, 22 millimeter with a quick release it, you know, it takes like two seconds to change your watch band.

Yeah. And I went out of my way. With Fossil to buy a watch. At the time, they were kind of positioning it that it was like a golf livery nine 11 style. And I was like, I gotta have that. Even if I don’t want the watch, I need the watch band. But uh, yeah, so that’d be something else to do and I think that would actually sell really well and you could do a combo and now you have this matching thing to go with it.

So something to think about, you know?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks. It’s a very cool, cool tip. Like I’ve given it some thought, but uh, so let’s talk about other brands, sister brands to heel [00:26:00] tread that people might not know about. I was digging around and I noticed on the website recently there’s curator sox.com. What’s that all about?

Gonçalo Henriques: Actually, curator, our office manager, man, she’s a big art fan and what we rebranded our company to be a company that caters to passions. So our biggest passion is art. So we did a, a sock brand inspired by all the famous artworks, and we launched in February last year, and it worked out really, really well.

Not as good as as Silk trade. I think the petrolhead are more possessive on, on that way than our guys. And in July last year, me Andan are also big music fans. We launched Stereo Socks. It’s, it’s inspired by the coolest album covers. It doesn’t mean to be the album that sells more records or most famous, but we do socks inspired on the coolest, like Depeche Mode’s

Crew Chief Eric: vi like Depeche Mode’s violator album.

Right. That would make sense exactly as a sock. Beautiful. Right? Yeah.

Gonçalo Henriques: Well, it’s really, really cool. It’s a black sock with only the, the, the flower. And we did it in a really special way. That was really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:27:00] Exactly. And I showed my wife the curator socks, ’cause that’s more her style. And she was like, I didn’t know they did.

I didn’t know they did this. And I’m like, yeah, I think you could order some or at least I know what, at least I know what I’m getting her for Christmas this year. That’s for sure.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Really good. So, you know, as we kind of wrap up our thought here, is there anything else you want to talk about that I didn’t, that I didn’t ask her?

Didn’t mention.

Gonçalo Henriques: No, no, it’s been terrific to be involved. It’s like paying us to work because all the contacts that we made are always big petrol heads people have are really, really nice. We’ve been asked to visit the McLaren ad office actually, then COVID appeared, but we have an invitation to, to do the full tour.

Every time there’s a race, we can get free invitations and go to the paddock and, and, and talk to everyone. I actually, I was sitting down on I two 50 GTO. Yeah, the one in the millions, they were going racing it in Portugal. The guy was so nice and we visited, showed us all the car collection that they had a lot of cool stuff and I just want to thank the community because it’s been so, so cool these past four years to be a [00:28:00] part of it.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: And again, you’re spreading that enthusiasm about motorsports, about automobiles. They are more than just appliances. Getting us from point A to point B. There’s a lot of art, there’s a lot of science, engineering, et cetera involved. And so this way. We get to wear our passion, we get to take it out there on the streets and show people, Hey, check out this cool design.

Or you get that question? What is that? What are you wearing? Exactly. Where did you get that? Well, I got it over at heel tread and you definitely gotta check it out. So with that in mind, any shout outs, promotions, special discounts, anything you wanna tell the world about coming up here in our holiday season?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah, we actually are going to have a big Black Friday promotion as everyone does. It’s going to start at the end of November so you can subscribe to our newsletter and be the first to get that information and a lot of cool things coming up until the end of the year. We’re launching also Port So, and Kneehigh socks you can wear them to when you go to the gym or to do whatever you want.

If you are a guy who needs high socks because you have cold in the winter,

Crew Chief Eric: are these sports socks gonna be thicker?

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah. Thick [00:29:00] socks. Yeah. Oh, I’m gonna have to read. See cruise socks, like the American Style Socks. We are going to launch a, a first, a small collection to test it, and it’s going to be mid-October.

I think they’re going to be available on the promotion, um, for Black Friday also. Yeah, I,

Crew Chief Eric: I know exactly what I’m ordering.

Gonçalo Henriques: Yeah. Good. There’s always a 10% discount on your first order, so you can test the brand and see if you like the socks. If you don’t like the socks, you just can return them. There’s no, no problem there.

Subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll receive then a confirmation and a discount code for your first order. 10% off. Yeah. I have a special discount code for all the fans of Break Fix. It’s break fix 2021. So we just put the code on checkout on the, on the checkout and get 20% off. That’s awesome. It’s, thank you.

It’s not, it’s not cumulative with without a promotion. So when we run the Black Friday promotion, you cannot use. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Good to know. Good to know. But we very much appreciate that. So if you haven’t ordered heel tread socks yet, this is your opportunity to get in on that and [00:30:00] check out the designs and really show off your motorsports pride and your enthusiasm about different brands or things that you really geek out upon.

So 20% off. Thank you very much, Sala. That’s very, very generous. Thank you for that. Designed and produced in Portugal. Heel Tread, uses seamless toe knitting to create a sock without any stitches. 80% combined cotton, 17% polyamide, and 3% elastin. Every sock is beautiful inside and out. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to drop Jonal a line at info@heeltread.com or follow them on social media at Heel Tread.

That’s H-E-E-L-T-R-A-D. And more importantly, if you have an idea for a new design or want to create the perfect gift. Send them an email with a design or inspiration you’d like them to work with at design@heeltread.com. So Zalo, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. I mean, like I said, this is super awesome because as Petrolhead, we do [00:31:00] try to find a way to share our enthusiasm with others, whether it be choose watches, socks, hoodies, all these kinds of things where we wanna show off and get people talking about.

Tell me about this car. Tell me about this race. Why is that important? You know? And then we get excited about it. We get to share that passion with others. And for us here at GTM, that’s super important because that’s part of our mantra, that’s part of what we do, is to continue to spread motor sports enthusiasm.

So as much as you thank us, we wanna thank you for being part of Motorsport history, being part of the automotive world, and being able to share this with everyone.

Gonçalo Henriques: Thank you. It’s, it’s been my pleasure. It’s been a, a hell of a ride from the last four years. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: absolutely. And congratulations and good luck on the next four years and beyond, and we’re looking forward to all those new designs.

Sign me up.

Gonçalo Henriques: Sure. Thank you.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on [00:32:00] www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at [00:33:00] www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

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