Editor's note: A version of this story ran in the January issue of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News.
DURANGO, Colo. (BRAIN) — Hollow is an alpaca-wool sock brand from Wisconsin, at least the fourth startup from industry serial entrepreneur Brian Davis, the man behind Fix It Sticks multitools, the BackBottle water bottle, and the Weatherneck balaclava.
Fix it Sticks continues to operate (the brand has found more growth in the hunting-and-fishing market than in cycling) and Davis still has a few crates of BackBottles that he sells occasionally. The Weatherneck … well, that was a learning experience.
But it’s fair to say that Hollow has been Davis’ biggest success so far. It launched in 2019 with a successful Kickstarter campaign, and then it took until last year for the company to sell a million socks total. Then it sold another million in 2025, with sales of about $40 million. More growth is expected as the brand supplements its consumer-direct sales with more brick-and-mortar distribution. Hollow socks are already in Scheels stores, where they are sold in the hunting and fishing department.
The brand’s successful enough that Davis has handed over the CEO reins to his partner Zach Stuck, because Davis prefers developing new companies to running them. In 2021, Stuck and Davis traded their equity in the company and Stuck became CEO while Davis took a much smaller minority share.
“Now I'm involved in the stuff that is kind of fun to do,” he said. That includes product development and attending trade shows and other events. Davis also teaches entrepreneurship at a local technical school.
Fine wool
BRAIN ran into Davis at the Outdoor Media Summit in Durango, where he shared that Hollow’s success is, of course, partly due to the product. Alpaca wool has advantages over sheep’s wool: Its hollow fibers wick moisture better, keeping feet drier. And because it doesn’t have lanolin, it’s hypoallergenic. It’s also said to be stronger and lighter than sheep’s wool. Hollow imports wool fiber and has the socks made to its specifications in North Carolina. The company is one of the few offering performance socks made of alpaca wool, with models targeted at hunting and fishing, running, and other activities. It doesn’t currently make a cycling-specific model, but at least one independent bike store, which happens to be in Davis’ hometown, carries them.
Besides the product, Davis said Hollow is finding growth thanks to the smart deployment of a variety of AI or Large Language Model tools.
“We have a staff of 15 and we do the work of 30 or 40 people,” Davis said during a presentation in Durango.
Identifying opportunities, tailoring content
Hollow deploys a long list of AI tools, starting with Gigabrain, which scrapes sites like Youtube and Reddit, looking for use cases for alpaca wool socks.
“What I'm trying to get at (with Gigabrain) is: What are people frustrated about? I am interested in people that are frustrated with socks that suck.”
For example, the tool might find online discussions between elk hunters who are frustrated by damp, cold feet after carrying gear into the woods and then waiting in a cold blind.
(A few weeks after the Durango presentation, Davis learned that Gigabrain has pivoted to a new business model, but he said several other AI tools can scrape Reddit and other sources in a similar way).
With a problem identified, Hollow takes the Gigabrain information and hands it over to an AI tool like GetPoppy.ai, which Davis described as “kind of a private ChatGPT.”
Users can load up GetPoppy with piles of relevant information. For example, Hollow uploaded information about alpaca, Peru, North Carolina, the advantages of Hollow’s socks, and the company’s voice and history. They can even upload studies of how to write the most effective ad and SMS copy.
“It’s like we are making our own Large Language Model,” Davis said.
Unlike the well-known consumer AI platforms, GetPoppy is a closed system, so there’s less chance that the tool will produce wacky AI “hallucinations” when it pumps out ad copy.
The tool can scour Hollow’s own customer reviews and other online reviews to find real customers who have used Hollow products to solve the precise problem that’s been identified. So it can then produce ad copy containing effective relevant testimonials.
The result is a steady flow of copy and scripts for emails, SMS, ads, videos and more.
Flooding the zone
GetPoppy not only produces the ad content, it identifies the best place to use it to reach the target audience.
Davis said the ad copy the tool produces is far from perfect; that’s why the company has human copy writers to polish the output or take it in a new direction. But the AI assist allows Hollow to run as many as 530 targeted ads at a time, far more than the brand’s competitors. Most run on Meta sites — Hollow spends about $1 million a month on ads. The volume allows the company to identify the most successful campaigns and put more resources toward them.
“If we find a winner, then we can start putting human resource capital into it,” Davis said. “We have our own copywriters that are full time, that work for us. We have people that do creative and graphic design, and video, and all that stuff. But we don't want to have them doing 530 ads at a time. We want to save their resources for digging in on the ones that we know are going to work.”
Currently about 98% of Hollow’s business is online, but its products are also sold through 15 or 20 retailers, and another major retail chain recently reached out about stocking.
As sales in the retail channel grow, Davis said he thinks AI tools will help Hollow efficiently work with retailers, helping them market effectively.
“I think these tools are gonna be super, super handy. My goal is to be a resource for our retailers, to be able to give them more information rather than just being an order taker,” he said.
Getting started
Hollow used a consultant to identify ways to use AI and help set up the tools. Davis noted that there are also online tools (of course) that can assist in setting up and combining multiple AI tools, including one called Gumloop.
