What kind of store sells only socks? That’s the question most people ask the first time they notice The Sock Drawer on Emma Avenue, usually while walking past it toward somewhere else. The answer, it turns out, is: a surprisingly good one.
The shop has been run by Margaret Colvin since 2019, when she took over the small retail space from a friend who’d opened it on a dare and then, predictably, panicked. Margaret did not panic. She spent two decades in retail buying before this, and she approached the sock problem the way a librarian approaches a messy catalog — methodically, with strong opinions about organization. The result is a narrow storefront that probably holds two thousand pairs of socks at any given time, arranged by weight, fiber content, and use case along painted wooden shelving that goes floor to ceiling on two walls.
Margaret is usually there, usually behind the counter with reading glasses pushed up on her head, and she will talk to you about merino wool for as long as you let her. She is not pushy about it. She just has a lot to say. Ask her what someone who does a lot of trail running should buy, and she’ll pull three options, explain the difference in cushion zones, and then tell you which one she’d actually choose. The recommendation is almost always right.
The inventory leans toward quality outdoor and work socks — Darn Tough, Smartwool, Wigwam, a couple of smaller domestic brands she rotates in. There are dress socks along one shelf and a surprisingly large novelty section near the front window, which Margaret says she keeps partly because “people need a reason to come in the door before they realize they need real socks.” Fair enough. The novelty stuff sells well, especially around the holidays, when the shop gets genuinely crowded by Springdale standards.
Pricing is what you’d expect for the quality — Darn Tough trail socks run around $22 to $28 a pair, Smartwool is similar, and the novelty options start around $10. Margaret doesn’t discount much, but she does have a loyalty card system she runs by hand in a little notebook, which she admits is not the most efficient method. She’s aware. She just doesn’t want to deal with software.
What makes the place worth your time is not really the product selection, which you could approximate online in about four minutes. It’s that Margaret has strong, specific, unsolicited-but-welcome opinions about everything in the store, and she’s usually right, and there’s something genuinely pleasant about shopping somewhere run by a person who clearly thought hard about what to stock. She doesn’t carry anything she thinks is bad. The shelves are edited the way a good restaurant menu is edited — with intention.
The shop keeps Tuesday through Saturday hours, roughly ten to six, though the sign on the door has an asterisk that Margaret says means “give or take, depending on how the morning goes.” That is probably the most honest thing written on any storefront in Springdale. Go on a weekday if you can. She’s less distracted, and you’ll actually get to have the merino conversation.
