This 39-year-old quit 80-hour consulting weeks to make underwear for his struggling family business. He credits ‘sweaty feet’ for record profits

When Lawson Glidden gets back from a hike in the woods around Ashland, N.H., he doesn’t always head home. Sometimes he heads to the sock department. “If my sock doesn’t fit just right, then when I get back from my hike, I go to the sock department, and I check in on our QC boards and make sure that the foot is fitting correctly,” he told Fortune. Glidden, 39, is president of Minus33, a maker of merino-wool base layers, underwear and socks, and the latest incarnation of a textile business his family has run in Ashland since 1916. He wears what he sells, more or less head to toe. “We make this polo, we make the underwear I’m wearing,” he said on a video call. “… We don’t make the pants or the shoes. That’s all we don’t make right now.” He also has opinions about what he sells. “They are the best socks on the planet,” Glidden said. “I say that because not only am I incentivized to say it and I believe it, but also because it’s true.” The numbers he cites aren’t modest either. Since he joined the company in 2018, Glidden said, profits have roughly quadrupled,…