Ed Hardy, listen up.
As the company spiralled towards ruin in 2009, CEO John McCarvel realised that in order to survive it would need to change direction and offer consumers something different. Now, owing to the efforts of the product design team, Crocs sales have skyrocketed once again thanks to a line of wedges, flats and boat shoes that account for 54 per cent of current sales.
McCarvel told CNN: 'Our main focus today is getting new customers to understand that we're no longer just a clog.
'I think this is our biggest challenge as a brand today...getting people to take a look at us in a different way.'
Recognizing there was a need to evolve he said: 'We had to innovate our way out of the situation we had put ourselves in.' Which meant coming up with dramatically different designs to please the loyalists and attract the sceptics.
Opposition to the original Croc slip-on has always been fierce. Blogs and websites devoted to hateful ranting about the ugliness of the shoe have drawn attention from millions of fashionistas outraged by the ubiquitous clog.
The new styles have contributed to last year's $150million profit and $1billion in total revenue.
About the original design, Dale Bathum, Crocs' senior vice president of product design noted: 'A lot of the haters didn't like the way other people looked in them, but they did maybe resent a little bit the comfort those people had and that they had the courage to go ahead and go out in public and wear them.'
Now though, according to Christy Saito, Crocs' vice president of design: '[People] say, "Oh my God, where can I buy these?" There has been hardly any resistance.'
To support this significant increase in sales, Crocs opened 120 new stores in the United States and aims to open another 100 stores this year. It is also expanding into new overseas markets, which now account for 65 per cent of sales.
You have to respect their success in diversifying. The numbers speak for themselves.
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