10


Q2 • 2021


BRANDS WE LOVE Brands We Love Crocs: a


Which Side of


“Ugly Cool” Are You On?


quick Google search for Crocs, the Colorado company that makes foam


plastic footwear, yields a few disparaging, though comedic, headlines and a fair few memes. Some are downright hilarious, such as the one that reads “See those little holes? That’s where your dignity leaks out.” If annual financial reports are anything


to go by, however, it would appear that Crocs is having the last laugh. In 2020, the company reported revenue of $1.4 billion, a 12.5 percent increase from 2019. There’s also plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that homebound folks were buying comfy Crocs online. The company’s digital sales— characterized as purchases via the company- owned website, third-party marketplaces, and e-tailers—rose by 50.2 percent in 2020. Those digital sales represented 41.5 percent of the company’s annual revenue. In 2019, digital sales were 31.1 percent of revenue. Direct-to- consumer sales increased 39.2 percent year over year as well. COVID times have meant plenty of


staying-at-home-and-working-in-sweats days, which seems to have been good business for Crocs and its comfort-driven footwear, born back in 2002. In a May 2020 story titled “Crocs Are Back in Style. And Not Just because of Coronavirus,” the Wall Street Journal says that some people think Crocs are


“the perfect shoes to wear when no one can see you wear them.”


On the other hand—and this may come as a surprise to many who are not doctors or nurses—it seems as though plenty of (very important) people wear Crocs outside of hospitals, nursing homes, and, well, the secret cover of home. An October 2020 Vogue.co.uk article titled “Have You Got a Pair of Crocs Yet?” outlines the seemingly endless list of celebrities who have collaborated with, endorsed, and shared their love for Crocs of late. From Justin Bieber to Rihanna to Ariana Grande to Pharrell, Crocs are now cool. So cool that Bieber’s first collaboration model with the brand, which sold for $60, was fetching twice that price on eBay after the stock sold out in 90 minutes in October of 2020.


From a Meme to a Dream Serving as Crocs’ Global Chief Marketing Officer until 2020, Terence Reilly knew full well when he stepped into the position seven


years earlier that the product wasn’t exactly fashion-forward. It was an older generation and health-care professionals who were fans; most everyone else was poking fun. Still, Reilly saw the positive side of being the butt of many a joke. Smartly, he recognized that if Crocs footwear was so polarizing that people were motivated to make fun of it in a meme, it probably had a segment of the population on the other side of the coin that loved them just as much. Reilly led the brand’s resurgence with innovative marketing that included social media distinction and celebrity and brand collaborations. “Everyone around the world knows the silhouette of the Crocs Classic,” Reilly explains. “So, what we needed to do was move from the awareness, which we had lots of, into really making the classic more relevant.” Reilly is fond of saying that the company needed to go from being a meme to a dream, and that meant embracing the original clog rather than chasing what was trendy at the time. On Crocs.com, the Classic Clog takes center stage, with a call to action that urges visitors to “stand up and stand out.” The idea is to “Come As You Are”—to be comfortable in your own shoes, be inspired by the Crocs cast, and “make any Crocs style your own.” It’s ironic that the original, straightforward Crocs footwear design is now marketed as a


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