When the Crocs co-founder first saw a prototype of the shoes back in 2002, the only words out of his mouth were "Those are ugly." Somehow though, those ugly shoes created a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, and have been worn by celebrities and even on the runways of Paris Fashion Week. So, how were three founders with zero experience in footwear able to build such a wildly successful shoe company? This is the surprising untold truth of Crocs.
In 2002. Lyndon Hanson had hit a low point: he was sleeping on a friend’s couch, after separating from his wife. Around that same time he also lost his job in computer hardware marketing and his mother passed away from cancer. His troubles seemed endless.
George Boedecker and Scott Seamans were long-time friends of Lyndon and could see he desperately needed some cheering up, so they setup a sailing trip together around the Caribbean to try and clear Lyndon’s head. Now, Scott was a quietly successful inventor, and had made a good living developing and patenting products, and at the time of this trip was already semi-retired at forty-eight.
However while they were on this sailing trip together, Scott asked Lyndon and George to try on a pair of rubber-like clogs he’d been developing after discovering something similar on a business trip to Canada. Who could have guessed in that moment Crocs would become a billion dollar business empire (in 2006 Crocs had its IPO, and they raised $239 million dollars which placed it as the highest initial public offering for footwear, ever. This put its market value at a little over a billion dollars).
Crocs did face a slump in the stock market for a while, but has now bounced back and had their highest revenue year ever - so let's look at the business success of Crocs, how they make so much money, why Crocs do such weird collaborations and lots more in this history of Crocs!
00:00 | Intro To The Crocs Story
00:29 | Chapter 1: A Life Changing Boat Trip
02:37 | Chapter 2: The First Sale
03:59 | Chapter 3: Ugly Goes Public
05:46 | Chapter 4: The Brother-In-Law
07:21 | Chapter 5: The End of Crocs?
09:49 | Chapter 6: Comfy is Cool