Hippy Feet

Hippy Feet is a Minneapolis based sock and apparel company dedicated to supporting the homeless community. Each product sold allows Hippy Feet to provide transitional employment to young people ages 16-24 who are experiencing homelessness. Hippy Feet creates jobs for homeless youth via their packaging, pick & pack order fulfilment, screenprinting, and embroidery operations. Hippy Feet’s current employment program is a 6  month job readiness program hosted at its Minneapolis office. Participants of the program are offered employment for an average of 15-20 hours per week during Q1-Q3, and  up to 30 hours per week during Q4.

By strategically partnering with local non-profits, Hippy Feet is able to identify its workers and ensure that their employment efforts are happening in a safe, convenient, and familiar environment that overlooks the traditional barriers that limit homeless youth from finding consistent forms of employment. Hippy Feet’s goal isn’t to be a forever employer for young people affected by homelessness, rather their aim is to provide income, opportunity, job training, and giving in a way that is both earned and respects human dignity. The long term goal for Hippy Feet is to play a pivotal role in positioning young people into stable housing and transition them into full-time employment elsewhere. Since adopting an employment model midway through 2018, Hippy Feet has created jobs for 150+ individuals and offered more than 4,400 hours of employment in total. 

Hippy Feet is committed to making all of their socks and apparel products in the  UnitedStates and with environmentally friendly materials and practices. Every pair of  HippyFeet socks is manufactured in North Carolina using sustainable materials such as recycled cotton, recycled polyester, and organic cotton. The recycled yarns used in Hippy Feet products are sourced from a recycling facility in Spain that takes pre existing materials such as tshirt trimmings and textile waste and turns them into upcycled yarns. This  process uses 99% less water than growing new cotton requires and eliminates the need to add  artificial dyes and harsh chemicals to the finished product.