Pictured above, a retail wall at Hibbett Sports. Notice the remaining colors of the Crocs and how few Nike and adidas slides are available? The Crocs had sold out in all of the colorful styles, but Hibbett’s had dedicated an entire section to Crocs. This was at a more ‘urban’ location for Hibbett Sports, which is a really important point.
My daughter runs track and field. She has several sets of slides that she could wear around before she begins warming up for her events. Oddly enough, yesterday, the entire family wore Under Armour. My daughter’s slides on yesterday? Under Armour. I never thought I’d see that day… but that’s another story on how amazing the Fat Tire HOVR Sonic is. At the field, most of the kids can be seen walking around with the volt and black Nike Racing bags. Every few feet I spot an adidas SprintSkin track spike, but for the most part track and field is dominated by Nike at the middle school level. Track spikes aren’t a major product in sneaker retail, but what I noticed at these events, when compared to the one Nationals event she attended prior to the quarantine, is that a shift has taken place. I had already recognized the shift at retail, but it wasn’t until a recent report from Sam Poser of Williams Trading that I took a longer look at something I never thought I’d see. Nike has finally lost a footwear battle, but it isn’t where you you may think.
Watching retail and resale for the last six years, I really didn’t pay attention to one particular item, slides. Not until 2019 when Nike created a Fanny Pack slide and later made an Air Max 90 Slide, is when I really looked at slides. In 2019, I started reselling the Nike Slides to see what type of interest there was in that particular Fanny Pack slide, I was able to sell the Fanny Pack by buying straight out of retail. With the Air Max 90 slide, at one point, from January to February 2020, I sold 60 pair, which indicated that slides were doing better than good at retail. Prior to that, in 2019, I had begun randomly grabbing Nike slides because while on retail dives I would see countless people visiting the Nike slide wall. You read that correctly. At FootLocker and Hibbett Sports, the chains had dedicated walls to Nike slides. Jordan Brand had long been creating upsale items with slides by creating a Retro inspired slide to pair with every major Jordan Retro release. Slides have always been a thing, I just didn’t really pay attention to it in detail until recently.
As a college basketball player, head basketball coach and scout, I have always known that one of the uniforms in sneaker culture was the Nike slide with a pair of socks. At one point, it was all about Stance socks. When Nike took over the NBA, Stance socks were replaced by Nike socks and at FootLocker the mobile racks that once carried Stance socks converted to Nike and Jordan socks. Those mobile racks changed last year to Crocs. This year the ‘Nike/Jordan’ slide wall changed. As noted at the head of this post, Crocs has taken over that space. I introduced this discussion with a note about my daughter’s track and field events. The reason I did this is because I noticed that Crocs had shifted from what I saw as a “Wal-Mart”, White people, nursing and culinary shoe, to a model being worn by every demographic and in particular by the teen athletes.
The work from home trend during the quarantine led to an increase of lounge footwear. Crocs had already been dabbling with quirky collaborative efforts like the Kentucky Fried Chicken Croc. The brand had already made incredible strides in fashion with an abundance of collabs. Those forays weren’t important. They helped with marketing, but after speaking with Sam Poser, who raised an important note on the influence of parents on kids during the quarantine, it makes perfect sense that Crocs has done the impossible. Crocs’ prominence in the service industry and in culinary made the brand more prominent than ever during the quarantine. Yes, the collabs with Justin Bieber, Post Malone and streetwear brands like Chinatown Market reached the fashion demographic, but those collabs aren’t really in the urban space. Crocs, like Vans a few years ago has crossed over into a demographic no brand has really been able to infiltrate, the young Black consumer. Nike has such a strong hold over that market, it’s almost a waste of time for any other brand to make slides and place them in urban accounts. This is not saying that Crocs are selling in the hood, I’m simply stating that I never thought I’d see Black kids and athletes replace the uniform of Nike slides and socks with Crocs.
It’s very compelling and should be a major discussion taking place on various channels. “Crocs revenue for the quarter ending December 31, 2020 was $0.412B, a 56.48% increase year-over-year.” What are my long term thoughts on Crocs? If you recall Vans’ surge into this demographic a few years ago, there is a parallel. Vans has even introduced a Crocs competitor, but the urban demographic always defaults to Nike. If a brand can capture that segment for a moment, without overproducing, think about Fila grabbing the women’s market with the Disruptor a few years back, then Crocs should be fine. What it looks like to me right now is that Crocs has increased their distribution and unless they are controlling the pipeline, Crocs could end up on heavy promo in a similar to fashion to Fila at retail with the Disruptor. This is going to be interesting to watch.