Reporter CLICK ON ADS visit ad sites or videos!
ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, October 12, 2012
www.issaquahreporter.com
Concerns raised Proposed home gun business has some Issaquah neighbors worried BY LINDA BALL
Issaquah natives Jake Director, left and Riley Goodman show off their new Strideline socks, which are set to be released in six major cities in the next couple of weeks.
LBALL@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
The success of Strideline is truly is a remarkable story for the life-long friends who were born just hours apart in the same hospital, grew up in the same neighborhood, attended Cougar Mountain Elementary, Issaquah Middle School and Issaquah High. When they made their commitment to the sock idea just months before graduating from high school in 2009, neither knew the first thing about business.
In an idyllic neighborhood, at the end of a dead-end street, sits a neatly kept home, one among a number of attractive homes with tidy yards. The home of Michael and Rachel Marinos fits right in. But some of the neighbors are concerned about a home occupation Michael wants to launch as a sideline to his regular job. The application is for Bigg Dogg Firearms, which would provide rifle and handgun transfers via internet sales transactions. According to the notice of application, customers would purchase firearms over the internet and Bigg Dogg would provide the transfer to pre-approved recipients. Issaquah senior planner Jerry Lind said a decision on the application could come soon. Lind said code allows up to 20 visits a day to a home business, but one customer coming and going counts as two visits. The application states that transfers would be by appointment and that the applicants don’t expect more than four visits per month. Michael Marinos, who served in the Navy, is now a contractor who has been working in Iraq and Afghanistan most of the time since 2004. “It’s primarily internet sales,” said Rachel Marinos. “I can guarantee you there will be no noticeable traffic to our home.” She said she sees Fed-Ex and UPS trucks coming and going on the street all the time, so
SEE STRIDELINE, 6
SEE GUNS, 2
KEVIN ENDEJAN, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
SOCKIN’ IT TO EM’ Strideline apparel business booming for Issaquah High graduates
Seattle skyline. Fast forward four years and that simple idea has evolved into so much more for the University of Washington business majors. Within the next two weeks the UW seniors will launch their line of athletic socks, Strideline, in six other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Saint Louis and Portland, Ore. Sales, which have already reached $300,000 so far this year in the Seattle market, are projected to reach $2 million by the end of 2013. “It’s really like chasing your dreams and reaching them,” Goodman said.
BY KEVIN ENDEJAN KENDEJAN@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
W
hen other kids were dreaming of careers as firefighters, policemen or professional athletes, Riley Goodman and Jake Director were always the oddballs.
“I remember very distinctly in the third grade there was a day on the bus when Jake and I were sitting there and we tried to come up with an idea for a clothing company,” said Goodman, 22. “It was the strangest thing for a couple of third graders.” Impressively, a few years later and the dream became a reality. Sparked by the near-death experience of one of their close friends and Issaquah High School lacrosse teammates, Goodman and Director put a business plan into action. “We just said we don’t know how long we’ve got here, this has always been something we wanted to do and we locked ourselves in the car for like two hours and said we’re not going to leave until we thought of something,” Direc-
THE BEGINNING
tor said. Parked and looking at a view of Seattle, the then 18-year-olds reached a decision — they would create colorful, stylized crew socks for lacrosse players that featured the