My entire life, I never had one big idea. I like to think I woke up one day and figured out how to make the world’s best canvas-and-rubber, waffle-soled deck shoes, how to distribute said shoes, and thus create the first vertically integrated tennis shoe company in the world; but the fact of it is, I could have been growing potatoes.
Actually, shoes have nothing to do with my success. What I’ve accomplished comes down to one thing: my knack for identifying and then solving problems. What I do better than anything else is cut out distractions. If a system isn’t working efficiently, I can see where it’s jammed, eliminate the problem, and find a way to keep everything moving forward.
We listened to trendsetters. My son, Stevie, perfectly articulates what we learned about expanding our business by working with kids on skateboards and surfboards: Listen to your customers, who will tell you what they want … Pay attention to the people using your product—or even better, work with them to create something completely new.
Making shoes is an art. I never wanted to make second-rate anything, and when it came to shoes, vulcanized rubber was synonymous with quality. By then, Charles Goodyear had figured out how to vulcanize rubber … Add to that my 20 years working every section of the production line, and I knew everything I needed to know about the art and chemistry of making a quality pair of canvas sneakers.
When I was in the ninth grade, I dropped out of school … School didn’t challenge me … The idea of being a high school dropout—the idea that I would rather work—never bothered me, and it certainly didn’t bother my parents. Half the kids I ever knew dropped out. Back then, there wasn’t a stigma to it.
My boss in Massachusetts around 1964 asked me to run the relatively new Randolph Rubber Company West in Garden Grove. It was losing a lot of money … Arriving at the factory, it took no more than five minutes to see what was wrong—pretty much everything … For one thing, the various departments didn’t communicate with one another. People were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to figure out what to do next.
When I moved out to California, I purchased a house in Costa Mesa on a peaceful cul-de-sac … At the time, I couldn’t have known our family would end up living in that house for almost 40 years.
I was learning that the California shoe market was a lot different from back East. Because of the amazing weather, people wore tennis shoes year-round, and not just for playing tennis. I steered Randy’s into doing more colors to cater to the SoCal market.
When my boss at Randy’s promoted people that didn’t deserve it, I quit. I had to decide what to do. Hell, making canvas shoes was the only thing I knew. After 20 years, I had learned every aspect of the sneaker business. I could make them in my sleep and suggested starting a small sneaker factory in Southern California. My supplier Serge D’Elia agreed to invest the $250,000 I’d need to start up the business … and the Van Doren Rubber Company was born.
Our bread-and-butter was style no. 44, a classic deck shoe that later became known, aptly, as “the Authentic.” Deck shoes were the kind of casual footwear popular all over the country then, but ours was the first to feature an extra-thick waffle sole.
From the day Vans was born, my idea had always been to sell our shoes right out of the factory. I was convinced once people saw how well made and how reasonably priced they were, they would flock to our factory in droves to buy our shoes, cutting out the middleman. Still, there needed to be somewhere the customers could try on the shoes and pay for them. To that end, we had carved out a small area at the very front of our factory on East Broadway in Anaheim to put in a tiny showroom, where we could sell our shoes to the public.
This is the hardest thing to do for any retail operation: How do you get other people to believe in the superiority of your product? First, the people who are working for you have to believe it. If you can convince your employees, then they’re going to be able to convince the customer.
By 1981, I’d become burned out on making sneakers … My little brother Jimmy took over and a few years later, the company was forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I returned with reluctance …
Bankruptcy attorneys said that to clear Vans’ debts, we would pay 25 cents on the dollar. This was wrong. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d pay a quarter of what we owed … So I went to our creditors and committed to paying 25% of our debt each year for four years. It made the most sense, and they agreed … Because of this we lost only one of our suppliers … When I was running Vans, we had done only $50 million in sales in our best year, but we had chalked up a $16 million profit.
In 1982, sales went through the roof with the release of the hit movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High … Sean Penn played Jeff Spicoli, a lovable stoner character who always wore Vans.
If there was ever a character custom-made to wear our shoes, it was Spicoli. Not only did he skate and surf, but he was also in a band. He epitomized everything that was cool about Vans. He was young, fun, and super likeable—an off-the-wall individual who was always his own man, much to the frustration of his teachers … When audiences saw the movie, orders for the checkerboard style exploded. The film launched Vans nationwide.
In 1987, we sold the company for $75 million to a private equity firm, which took it public in 1991. In 2004, the fashion conglomerate Vanity Fair bought Vans for $400 million.
VF expanded Vans’ retail operations, adding more than 700 stores worldwide. From 2008 to 2013, Vans increased revenue from $750 million to nearly $2 billion. Holy s**t!
