#17. How VANS Piggybacked on Skating to Become Popular

Adidas, Nike, Puma are some of the names that come to mind when you think of brands that have done the best marketing.

But there is another footwear brand that has built its success largely on its association with sports—actually one sport in particular — Skateboarding.

VANS stands as one of the most iconic brands in sneakers and skating culture. After over fifty years in the game, the brand is responsible for some of the most ubiquitous skateboarding footwear that has helped mold the sport and its culture.

Whether you’ve picked up a skateboard or not, chances are you’ve owned a pair of Vans or know someone who does.

Vans is the #1 skateboarding shoe company in the world, having become the uniform of choice for skaters, bikers, surfers, and snowboarders alike.

The Vans brand took on an even greater significance after the company became the sponsor of the now-legendary Warped Tour, the longest-running music festival in North America.

But how did a small, family-owned business achieve such success when facing competition from rivals like Converse, Under Armour, and sneaker giants like Nike?

The answer lies in how Vans shifted their focus from being a manufacturing company to a marketing company and from a mere skate shoe to a lifestyle brand. This is the story of that transition.

In 1964, California-based Paul Van Doren was an employee of the Randolph Rubber Company. Despite being the third largest shoe manufacturer in the US, Randolph's profit margins were terrible, with only a few pennies made for every shoe sold. Van Doren knew that the real profits lay in retail and not in manufacturing, so he came up with a business plan to sell shoes directly to the consumer.

But when his idea was turned down by his boss, Paul quit his job at Randolph to form the Van Doren Rubber Company with his brother and two other business partners.

In 1966, the "House of Vans" store was established in Anaheim, California, and three months later, they sold their first shoes.

During the first decade of its launch, Vans struggled to turn a profit, but once the skaters from Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach showed up, sales took off.

Essentially, Vans shoes became popular amongst the local skateboarders in the Southern California region since the waffle shoe was perfect for gripping on the board, while the narrow last provided greater stability on the narrow boards of the late-sixties and early-seventies.

Also, the Vans shoes were handmade, which gave the option to customize styles & sizes according to what the skaters wished. These skaters were unconventional people who loved the idea of wearing something wacky, & they chose to stand out by wearing a different shoe on each of their feet.

What started out as a quirky statement by these skateboarders eventually became an identity, & laid the foundation for street & sneaker culture. You could soon see Vans in the whole of southern California, with skaters carving bowls and cruising down the endless coastline.

Vans & Skate Culture

Although their shoes weren’t originally designed with skateboarding in mind, the key to Vans' early success lay in supporting the rising skate culture of the 70s and 80s.

The company hardly spent money on advertising at first, but it wasn't long before Stacy Peralta became their first sponsored skateboarder. (For the peeps that didn’t read how Nike signed their first athlete, go here).

For $300 a week, Stacy Peralta would wear Vans gear at all his competitions, and it didn’t take long before all of Vans’ stores were paying pro-skaters to wear their shoes. The first shoe model was the ‘Authentic’

It had a rubber sole that was twice as thick as that of other brands. Due to the waffle-shaped profile, the grip on the board was also better. As a result, the ‘Authentic’ became intimately tied to the legendary Zephyr skateboarding team, aka the Z-Boys. Hailing from Dogtown in the mid-70s, they helped pioneer what would become modern-day skateboarding and wore blue Authentic’s as part of their uniform at the Del Mar Nationals in 1975.

A year later, Z-Boys members Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva would help develop the company's first skate shoe, known initially as "Off The Wall", and later renamed "The Era". It became the shoe of choice for a whole generation, and Vans would set up to become the de facto skate shoe brand for decades to come.

By successfully appealing to the youth culture of its time, Vans was able to gain what every shoe brand now desperately wants: frequent endorsements by high-profile celebrities, first in sports and later in Hollywood.

A famous example is when Universal Studios called to say that 21 year-old Sean Penn wanted a pair of their checkerboard slip-ons to wear in his upcoming movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

The free screen time given to their shoes would propel Vans to nationwide popularity in 1982. By 1987, the company was selling over 2 million shoes a year, earning them over $50 million, and their first signature skate shoe would soon debut (in 1988) as a collaboration with legendary vert skater, Steve Cabballero. But the fast times would soon come to a halt.

The Beginning of the Fall — & Rising Up from the Ashes

After a few years of great business in the 80s, Vans would start producing shoes for seemingly everything: basketball, running, break-dancing, and even skydiving. But the production costs were too high and sales were disappointing, forcing the company to file for bankruptcy in 1984, with over $12 million in debt.

Luckily, founder Paul Van Doren was able to negotiate well and save the company (that’s a story for another time). Three years after the impending bankruptcy, he resurrected the brand—free of debt.

A year later in 1988, Paul would sell his company for $75 million to a banking firm. But the regime change ushered in new problems, & Paul stepped down as chairman in a few years. By the 90s, Vans was facing competition from younger shoe brands like DC and Osiris. The new owners wanted to prevail with a new strategy against the competition. Production was moved to China, and the designs were changed. The customer base responded moderately, and after 5 years of sustained growth from 88’ to 93’, Vans' profits would begin to fall.

Ten years later, sales had stagnated, and Vans was losing $30 million a year.

Transition to Marketing Company

The one saving grace that kept the brand relevant throughout the 1990s was that Vans no longer only made and sold shoes, but transitioned into a marketing company.

Learning & reflecting from their growth in the early 70’s on what made Vans popular in the first place, Vans decided to organize a huge skating event and linked it up with the organizer of a punk rock tour.

In 1995, they started the Skateboard Contest Warped Tour for the first time — A music and sports event that runs through the countries for several weeks. In 1998, the Warped Tour was so big and successful that it went international & the Warped Tour took place outside the USA.“ It was a resounding success for the next 25 years and offered international exposure to some of the biggest acts of the 90’s and 2000’s.

Not long thereafter, Vans set out to sponsor sports events like the Triple Crown for skateboarding, with the first edition debuting in ‘95 at the Hard Rock Café in Newport Beach, with 11,000 people in attendance.

In ‘96 they added surfing to the contest, followed by snowboarding in ’97, and wakeboarding, motocross, and BMX in later years.

The events received global television coverage and prompted Vans to add a pro-surf team to their operations in the late 90s. Years later, they'd be sponsoring the US Open of Surfing!

Vans also came up with the first-ever Park Terrain world championship, which was chosen to serve as the blueprint for the skateboarding competitions in the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Vans continued their strategy and hosted an array of events. (Other Vans events would come to include the Vans Pool Party, the Vans Downtown Showdown, Slam Jam City and the Vans/Hard Rock BMX Jam, to name a few.) It was this wave of event sponsorship and lifestyle branding that helped maintain the cool factor around an otherwise financially stagnant company, and as a result, Vans was acquired in 2004 for $400 million by the VF Corporation.

With a number of other brands in its portfolio, like Wrangler, Timberland, and the North Face, VF was well-positioned to oversee Vans' comeback, and their clever business strategy resulted in just that. Alongside other skate brands like Thrasher and Palace, Vans had expanded its appeal beyond extreme sports into fashion at large.

The turning point came in 2004 with the launch of the Customs program, which allowed fashion designers to create their own slip-on designs. The following year, Vans teamed up with Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld for high-end collections that secured their place in the fashion industry.

They've also created shoes for everyone, from Supreme to brands like Star Wars, Disney, Metallica, and The Beatles, all of which helped grow their fanbase. The skate shoes were then one of the few fast-growing categories in the otherwise-stagnant U.S. sneaker market.

Rather than spending money on new shoe designs, VF Corp refocused on retail by raising its store count to 200 by 2009. They also re-established classic models like the Authentic and the Era as center pieces of Vans' product-line. VF would also leverage their distribution channels to push Vans into the apparel market. Thanks to the sale of T-shirts, sweatshirts, backpacks, jeans, and more, Vans apparel became a $400 million dollar cash cow by the mid-2010s.

As a result of this expansion, most people who now buy Vans are regular consumers, and have very little interest in extreme sports. With the rise of the streetwear and athleisure-wear market, people have opted for sportswear as a part of their daily wardrobe, providing companies like Vans with a new, sizeable market to profit from.

Nowadays, there is a whole sub-culture that uses Vans as their canvas and customizes them. According to recent surveys, Vans is now the second favourite footwear brand among teens, behind Nike, and has eclipsed “North Face” as VF’s top-selling brand. Where other companies would have met their downfall, Vans repeatedly found ways to prosper through successful brand extension. They now boast over 2000 stores worldwide, with total revenues rising from $3 billion in 2015 to $4.2 billion in 2022 ($3.7 billion in 2023).

Where is Vans at Today?

Vans didn’t just build its footwear empire on the unlikely strength of a waffle-shaped sole. The authenticity that made the brand so successful was rooted in the brilliant decision to associate with skateboarding and street culture and become an icon in the skating and extreme sports world.

So for all its success, the company still has a lot of room to grow. With a fan-base ranging from pop culture to skate legends like Tony Hawk to socialites like the Kardashians.

Vans’ products are now omnipresent. Having grown from a single shoe store to a multinational giant that grosses 80% of its revenue from shoe sales alone, it's a true case of “rags to riches”.

Here are some interesting statistics of the Vans Brand

• Vans holds a 7% portion of the global sneaker market. In the skateboarding shoes segment, it occupies a 10.1% market share as of 2022.

• Over 105 million pairs of shoes were manufactured and sold by Vans in the 2023 fiscal year.

• Of all the shoes Vans manufactures every year, 37% are casual footwear.

• The average price of a Vans shoe in 2023 is $72. Back in 2017, it was $42, in 2020 it was $53

• A 61% price premium is seen from reselling Vans shoes. On average, a second-hand Vans sells for $121.

• About 67% of the total sales of Vans are generated from the men’s section & 33% comes from the women’s department.

• 95% of all Vans shoes are manufactured in China while 65% of the revenue comes from the Americas & 21% from Europe & the rest from Asia Pacific.

Data Sources

If you are curious about how Vans makes its iconic shoes, here’s a YouTube video that shows you the details!