I saw a tagline Run, Birkenstock, Repeat. I haven’t been able to find it since I saw it. The tagline immediately tied into my daughter’s middle school track season. Earlier this year as each track and field event started, I paid attention to a phenomena that carried over to the parents. Athletes were wearing CROCS and Birks. My immediate response was the parents bought the shoes and the kids jacked them to wear once they felt the comfort. Then I thought about the store reopening in 2020 and what I was also witnessing on sneaker websites.
In the past, the tradition for athletes and non-athletes, was slides and Nike socks, particularly in the African-American community, but in typical fashion I watch the feet of everyone around me. Track and field events are not heavily influenced by AAU dollars so the kids aren’t wearing team shoes of any sort between races. The athletes also run more events since there aren’t typically enough athletes to cover the spectrum. They don’t want to damage their spikes, and while my daughter will walk around with her feet pointed in the air, we eventually got her slides as the time between the High Jump and 4×400 can be an all day wait. What’s important about track and field is that the breakdown of athletes are are across the racial spectrum giving immediate representation of various demographics.
Birkenstories
On the Birkenstock site, the team is smart enough to utilize content to share stories about how fans of the brand arrived to wear the shoes. One of those stories covered two aspects for me, sport and education. “Charlie Strong was the first black head coach for college football in Texas.” I could spend a lot of time on the importance of this, but I’m looking at an important shift for Birk. His story however resonated so I’ve included the link above and his pictures in this post. When he speaks of how he came to wear the kicks it is both funny and relative to my own experience with the brand.
Having attended San Diego State, Birkenstock has been a part of my world for years. They didn’t really exist in the life I’ve created in Tennessee. Memphis is a blue collar city. There aren’t any beaches, so Birkenstock wasn’t seen a lot over the years. Memphis is 69% African-American, sneakers are more prevalent because this is Nike’s second home. During the quarantine things changed considerably. As the quarantine lifted, an interesting shift happened. Crocs and Birks were a part of the attire at malls throughout the city. These weren’t White, hipster types as you’d expect. Like at my daughter’s track meets, these were teens. Different colors of Crocs, UGG Fluffy sandals and even injection molded Birks were showing up. Kids and adults were excited about getting out of the house, but they weren’t excited about wearing confining sneakers or dress shoes. People were lounging.
I haven’t been able to find any detailed info on Run, Birkenstock, Repeat, but the concept is brilliant. I made my own shoes at one point. I’ve researched a lot of different materials in writing about sneakers and footwear. I’ve owned Birks. I wore them when I stood on my feet all day as a college professor. My students called them my Jesus sandals, kind of like what Coach Strong’s players called his, lol. I told my students they were Jesus sandals because they shaped to my feet and only God could make a shoe that felt like this for an ex-athlete who fell off of an F-14 aircraft twice during his Navy career. While the shoes many of the athletes were wearing from Birks and other brands were injection molded, the older athletes at the combined events for high school and middle school, wore the Cork Footbed models of Birkenstocks.
Here is the differentiation. Fashion is fickle, but performance is a benefit. While CROCS and UGGS offer comfort and fashion, I’ve begun researching and I’ve found that the recovery aspects of Birkenstocks footwear is a real thing. While collabs have garnered the brand new fans, the comfort and professional aspects will have a longer affect on the direction of the brand. I will be reaching out to the team over the next few weeks to try and track down if Run, Birkenstock, Repeat was a glitch in the Matrix or a real program that is being implemented. If the brand is going to begin operating in support of athletes, I feel that Birks are going to become a staple in the closet of more people than a collab could ever produce for the brand.
Stay tuned.