CROCS

You may not know this, but in the beginning Crocs were designed to be simple footwear to be worn on boating trips. It all goes back to 2002, Boulder, Colorado, where three friends, Lyndon Hanson, Scott Seamans, and George Boedecker, decided to start a company called Crocs Inc. Crocs sabots were first advertised at a boat show, where roughly two hundred models were sold (a rather small and decidedly unencouraging number). Yet, thanks to their innovative design and undoubted comfort (being made of plastic, the shoes do not retain odors, as well as being slip-resistant), Crocs soon spread outside the United States, to Europe and other parts of the world. In Italy, for example, rubber flip-flops arrived in 2007 and initially found their development through children: the colors, the lightness of the footwear, as well as the presence of pins in a wide variety of shapes (animals, faces, flowers and so on), to be detached and reattached in the appropriate holes, immediately won the attention of the little ones. Regarding the adult world, on the other hand, although no one considered them to be aesthetically beautiful or elegant footwear, seeing them on the feet of celebrities, such as Al Pacino or Matt Damon, immediately made a difference. Thus it was that so-called counterfeit Crocs began to circulate, the price of which was decidedly more approachable than the original, if not blatantly overpriced. And, indeed, who didn't own a pair of Crocs? Surely you remember that time when sporting the well-known, colorful rubber slippers had become a real fashion statement: everyone wanted them, everyone considered them a must-have. Initially considered one of the most successful footwear brands, Crocs Inc. lost roughly $185 million in 2008. Between debts, laid-off employees and warehouses full of unsold Crocs, the U.S. company experienced a period of real economic crisis. In addition to the counterfeiting problem (here in Italy Crocs were often sold at bargain prices, even under five euros), the decision to diversify the products (initially only Crocs with a strap were marketed), as well as the durability of the footwear (they do not wear out easily, so they do not have to be changed often), combined with other factors (e.g., the change in buyers' tastes), led the company to a real collapse. The year 2018 marked a real rebirth for the famous rubber footwear. To everyone's amazement, Crocs made their comeback in Paris Fashion Week, thanks to Balenciaga. In fact, the fashion house proposed a version of the wedged footwear for spring/summer of the year 2018. Not only that, Crocs appeared in Demna Gvasalia's 2022 spring collection in the version equipped with stilettos. A fashion that, despite the difficulties of the past, now seems indestructible. An increase in sales was also seen by the company during the pandemic related to the Covid-19 emergency: especially during the early days, people, confined to their homes, were looking for comfortable, practical and useful clothes and footwear for home life. To give you an idea, in 2020 the company's revenues were 1.18 billion. A real milestone for Crocs Inc.! So, Crocs have had a not-so-easy history, but despite past difficulties, they now seem to have become an evergreen garment. If there were a single definitive characteristic that could sum up the essence of Crocs, it would be naiveté-that same kind of naiveté that has decreed the success of naïve art.