Better in their words…

No fetish for socks; I just like comfortable feet.
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NORTHFIELD, Vt.—Designing the world’s best sock takes more than just sweat.

Just ask Ric Cabot, a third-generation mill owner from here, who says he is out to sew “the world’s most uncompromising outdoor performance sock.” His Darn Tough Vermont line, a merino wool item, has 1,441 stitches per square inch, which he believes to be a record. The result, he says, is unique form-fitting softness.

“It’s what I call the math of the sock,” Mr. Cabot adds. “Before me, nobody was talking about stitches per inch.” Ric Cabot calls his ‘Darn Tough Vermont’ socks ‘uncompromising.’ Darn Tough socks can withstand 30,000 “rubs” from a machine—seven times more than the next-best brand, and will hold up for life, he says. He tests his claims by wearing Darn Toughs for three weeks at a time without a single wash, simulating the beating a pair can take from potential fungus buildup or the unrelenting sweat of a long hike.

He does have competitors. The race to knit the ultimate high-performance sock is advancing at a blistering pace. A decade ago, fewer than 10 companies made socks designed to reduce bunions, blisters and bad smells. Now more than 100 companies—mostly in the U.S.—are competing to get a foot in the door of the lucrative market for $25-a-pair socks.

They are investing millions of dollars to keep the feet of hikers, skiers, runners and other active Americans safe and dry. A pair of feet has 250,000 sweat glands and can produce “moisture,” as the industry calls it, of up to 30 gallons a year.

So these high-end sock makers are battling over the respective merits of merino wool and synthetic blends, creating ventilation slots to release heat and adding “wicking rings” to push away moisture from the foot. Many are unafraid to step on the toes of rivals—or point out holes in others’ designs.

“The all-wool sock? That’s been done and done and done. That was the same technology we had in the Civil War,” says Kris Dahlgren, president of Dahlgren Footwear Inc., of West Linn, Ore., a company her parents founded in 1978. Dahlgren socks are made with a technology that reduces foot sweat by 40%, she says, using a wool blend that includes fiber from the hairs of the Peruvian alpaca and the company’s patented absorption zones with “wicking rings” that transfer sweat from the foot through the ankle. “The fibers we’re using are more expensive, more premium. It’s like cashmere,” Ms. Dahlgren says.

Her claims have their detractors. Socks like Dahlgren’s, using synthetic materials or other blends, merely trap the heat inside the shoe and are akin to “wearing a plastic bag,” says Peter Duke, chief executive of Point6, which is named for 98.6 degrees, as in body temperature. His Steamboat Springs, Colo., company uses an antimicrobial wool to wick away sweat.

Joshua Stacy, who hikes about 2,500 miles a year, says his Darn Tough socks bunched up, got wet, and gave him toe and heel blisters because they didn’t fit him snugly. Now he swears by socks from Fits Sock Co. that feature a small toe cup and deep-heel pocket and slide easily onto his feet, he says.

Martin Criminale’s merino wool socks made by SmartWool LLC, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., rubbed him the wrong way when his feet shriveled up into “little raisins” on long weekend runs in the rainy climate of Seattle. Now the 49-year-old is raving about the eight pairs of socks he owns from Teko LLC, in Boulder, Colo., which is trying to sock it to competitors with an organic wool from Argentina and seamless toes meant to aid comfort. SmartWool stands by its socks. “Our 100% SmartWool guarantee applies to everything we make,” says Mark Satkiewicz, SmartWool’s president.

Mr. Criminale, an information technology specialist at the University of Washington, likes his Tekos so much he reserves them for special occasions. “I usually save them for my longer runs or wetter runs,” he says, adding he can wear them for three days straight without any problems.

Too many Americans have an overstuffed sock drawer, filled with cheaply made products that fall apart and must be replaced several times a year, argues Thomas Lee, a co-founder of Goodhew Socks, based in Chattanooga, Tenn., which asks potential customers to “Trust our Thread Architects,” the company’s sock designers. “There’s a backlash afoot over the disposability of consumer products, which Americans have taken for granted for 30 years,” says Mr. Lee.

Developing high-end performance socks isn’t a walk in the park. Fox River Mills Inc. of Osage, Iowa, has six research and development employees who slide prototype socks onto a knee-high mannequin leg with pressure sensors installed that measure whether the fit is too tight. “Everybody has to put their best foot forward to show why we’re better than everyone else,” says Mike Tyer, Fox River’s marketing director.

At Cabot Hosiery Mills Inc., which makes Darn Tough, creating a new sock can take up to 18 months and require hundreds of prototypes, says Mr. Cabot. Two research-and-development people work year-round at the company’s mill, a one-story facility about the size of a suburban supermarket nestled in a valley in Vermont’s Green Mountains. They seek to find the best balance of yarn weight, stitch patterns, nylon color and at least 10 other variables.

Inside, cones of brightly colored merino wool dangle from the ceiling above knitting machines. Up to 12 colors of bright merino wool yarn are pulled from cones dangling from the ceiling into the teal-colored machines’ high-speed knitting needles. Employees patrol the eight rows of machines, checking socks by hand.

The mill produces up to 100,000 pairs of socks a week; they retail for $14 to $30 a pair. “Our goal is for each Darn Tough sock to leave here with just one hole in them,” says Mr. Cabot. Wearing a Darn Tough prototype for three straight weeks without a wash, “they basically smell like you’ve just grabbed them off the rack,” says Mr. Cabot, pointing to a multicolored ankle sock he was testing on a recent day.

Liz Thomas, a 27-year-old professional hiker, says she used to have to replace her socks every 10 days. She says she logged about 2,000 miles last year in 12 pairs of Darn Tough socks and didn’t have to replace any of them. The socks do a good job of repelling “trail grime,” the combination of mud, sweat, dirt and pine needles that can cling to a sock, she says. “I’m not sure what’s going on at a microbial level, but from the sniffer test, I can say it’s working,” she says.

Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared June 1, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: It Ain’t Rocket Science, but Sock-Making Comes Close.

It Aint Rocket Science, but Sock-Making Comes Close – WSJ.com.