Crocs make a comeback
Looks nothing like the resin ‘goalie mask’ shoes of the past
For some, it may seem like a lifetime. But this summer, Crocs will celebrate 10 years of swaddling North American feet in resin goalie masks – a decade that has seen the brand become as synonymous with comfort as with calamitous fashion.
The current outlook, however, has investment advisers pondering a c-word of a different sort: comeback. Flipping the switch on its former “ugly can be beautiful” slogan, the Crocs brand is finding renewed public favour with a collection of shoes that don’t immediately imply gardening, or having given up.
From delicate wedges to ballet flats, loafers to lace-ups, a portfolio of fresh designs helped company revenue top $1 billion in 2011, while net income rose by 32 per cent in the first quarter of 2012.
“Our ongoing results are definitely supported by people looking at new ways to bring Crocs into their closet,” Andrew Nichol, managing director of Crocs Canada, says. “You may not recognize the silhouette on someone’s foot as Crocs, but they’re still Crocs inside.”
The slip-on shoes are made from a proprietary resin called Croslite, which is noted for forming to wearers’ feet, levelling walking load, absorbing shock and resisting odour. They debuted at a Florida boat show in the summer of 2002, saw their first mall kiosk in 2004, and were a full-blown phenomenon by 2006.
Between 2008 and 2010, however, problems with overdistribution and growing cultural stigma (The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan described them as “the equivalent of waterproof bedroom slippers, with a similarly imprecise fit.”) led to considerable waning in the shoes’ popularity, spurring a dramatic restructuring to return to profitability
“A lot of the doom and gloom was coming from people thinking Crocs wouldn’t be able to evolve, and that they were a one-trick pony,” Nichol said. “Our product development group worked extremely hard at proving the naysayers wrong.”
Crocs has been shrewd with its reinvention, enlisting some of social media’s biggest stars to build grassroots credibility. Popular beauty vlogger “Missglamorazzi,” for instance, was flown to Chicago last year to try out Crocs’ latest line, which she later recommended to her more than half a million channel subscribers on YouTube.
But there’s still work to be done. A high-profile fashion magazine contacted for this story declined to comment, citing the “if you can’t say anything nice” clause, while a recent survey of New York Times readers saw Crocs named among car alarms and lower-back tattoos as things in need of prohibition.
Elizabeth Semmelhack, a senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, says the brand needs “to softly tread into the wardrobe” as an essential shoe, as opposed to being marketed as a fashion statement.
“The flip-flop seems to consistently find its niche, and to constantly generate relevance within fashion. The Croc came on so fast and furi- ous, and was so warmly embraced or hotly refuted, that it didn’t get that same chance to settle in as a necessity,” Semmelhack says.
For now, the outlook is one of cautious optimism.
As of early July, the brand’s stock had six “buy” endorsements from Wall St., three “holds” and not one “sell.” In a note to investors, Benchmark footwear analyst Robert Samuels praised Crocs’ turnaround from “a one-hit wonder to a multichannel retailer,” but also noted that the. brand needs better marketing to boost awareness of new products.