Vans (company)

Vans is a manufacturer of skateboarding shoes and apparel based in Costa Mesa, California. The company was founded in 1966. Vans has played an instrumental role in the development of skate and street culture, especially in Southern California. Vans was formerly known for its sponsorship of Warped Tour, which it began sponsoring in 1996, one year after the tour's inception. It was thereafter known as Vans Warped Tour. Vans Warped Tour ended in 2018. Vans has also sponsored numerous athletic events, including the International Surfing Association World Surfing Games, US Open of Surfing, and Triple Crown of Skateboarding. Vans has over 2,000 retail locations throughout eighty-four countries.

Vans was founded as Van Doren Rubber Company in 1966 by brothers Paul and Jim Van Doren, along with partners Gordon Lee and Serge Delia. The Van Doren brothers both had prior experience working at a sneaker factory. Paul Van Doren had dropped out of school as a young teenager. The decision upset his mother, who made him get a job at the shoe factory she worked at, which was called Randy's. Unbeknownst to anyone's expectations, Paul took to the job and remained at Randy's for twenty years while rising through the company ranks. He eventually became the company's executive vice president. By the early 1960s, Randy's had become the third-largest shoe manufacturer in the United States. It was around this time that Paul learned just how much more money shoe retailers made compared to shoe manufacturers and decided to create his own company that could operate under both roles. He joined forces with his brother, Jim, and their friend, Gordon Lee, who was a manufacturing manager that Paul had worked with at Randy's. They partnered with Serge Delia, who was a US supplier of Japanese shoe uppers. Using $250,000 from an investor, the four of them founded Vans. Paul Van Doren and Delia each owned 40 percent of the company, while Jim Van Doren and Lee both owned 10 percent.

A modern-day Vans Authentic 44 sneaker.

The first Vans store opened on March 16, 1966, at 704 E. Broadway in Anaheim, California. The first shoes put on display were sample pairs; customers would try them on and place orders for their size. About twelve customers placed orders for shoes on the first day, which were then manufactured at the store overnight. The first Vans shoe sold was the Authentic, a canvas sneaker that had an outsole twice as thick as its competitors at the time. The Anaheim store quickly proved successful, and Vans rapidly began opening additional retail locations. Ten stores were opened within the first ten weeks, but only four ended up proving profitable. Paul Van Doren was advised by his accountant to close the unprofitable stores, but he didn't listen and continued to open numerous other stores. Paul thought that the more sneakers Vans produced, the more production costs would decrease, while overall profits would increase and make up for the stores that were losing money. Within the first year and a half of Vans's founding, a total of fifty retail stores were opened. This strategy was not particularly successful, and Vans struggled financially for its first ten years in business.

By the mid-1970s, Vans had found its modus operandi for financial success: producing skateboard sneakers. Although Vans were not originally designed for skateboarding, they had been popularized among local teen skateboarders in California, who found them hardier than other sneakers on the market. The Authentic 44 sneaker was constructed with pure vulcanized crepe rubber, and its signature waffle sole provided extra grip and traction while skateboarding. Vans also had a unique business policy, which allowed customers to buy only one shoe at a time, rather than a pair. This practice was popular with skateboarders, who often wore out one shoe faster than the other. Vans soon found itself as the signature shoe for skateboarders in Santa Monica and Venice.

Until the skateboarders came along, Vans had no real direction, no specific purpose as a business other than to make the best shoes possible. When skateboarders adopted Vans, ultimately, they gave us an outward culture and an inward purpose.”––Paul Van Doren

In 1975, Vans was approached by Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta to create a custom skateboarding sneaker. Together, they came up with the Era 95, which featured a padded ankle, a diamond waffle sole, and the now-famous “Off the Wall” logo. The phrase "off the wall" originated from a skateboarding trick done by Alva. Following the collaboration, Vans sponsored Alva and Peralta as part of a team of professional skateboarders. By the late 1970s, Vans had released several other skateboarding shoes, including the Old Skool 36, SK8-Hi 38, and Classic Slip-On 98. These shoes were soon for sale in dozens of Vans stores––mostly in Southern California, as well as in outlets across the US. By this point, Vans were widely known among skateboarders as well as surfers and BMX bicyclists but were not as recognized in popular culture. That changed in 1982, when actor Sean Penn wore a pair of black-and-white checkerboard Vans slip-ons in his role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This doubled Vans's brand value from $20 million to over $40 million. Using the profits from its newfound popularity, Jim Van Doren decided that Vans should extend into producing athletic shoes for various other sports, such as running, basketball, volleyball, wrestling, and breakdancing. However, the new lines failed to catch on with consumers, and Vans quickly faced financial downfall after it was unable to pay back its bank note.

In 1984, Vans filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Jim Van Doren was then removed from the company by the court. Paul Van Doren was partially retired at the time but came back to lead Vans out of bankruptcy. He set up a sales plan and, over the course of 1984 to 1987, paid back all the money that Vans owed, a total of approximately $12 million. Soon thereafter, in 1988, Vans was sold to the banking firm McCown De Leeuw & Co. In 1991, Vans became publicly traded on Nasdaq. Vans's newfound stability did not last throughout the '90s. By 1994, Vans was obtaining the majority of its products from overseas due to bad business decisions regarding the American factories, as well as Californian environmental regulations that affected the types of shoes they could manufacture there. In January 1995, Vans laid off several hundred employees, along with an additional 1,000 employees five months later after it shut down its Orange County manufacturing plant.

The sales downfall of the 1990s persisted throughout the early 2000s, by which point Vans was losing $30 million per year. In 2002, Vans sought to revitalize its original skate shoe lines in order to distinguish itself rather than continue to compete with the chunky, tech-forward silhouettes of newer brands like DC and Osiris. In 2003, Vans wrote off $20 million in one-time charges. By 2004, Vans was "essentially breaking even." On April 27, 2004, VF Corporation announced its purchase of Vans for $396 million. Vans then became part of VF Corporation's Outdoor Coalition. Shortly after completing the acquisition, VF funded an eighteen-month survey of 26,000 consumers across twelve countries in order to evolve Vans's brand strategy and gain understanding of consumer perceptions, needs, and purchasing behavior. An additional goal of VF Corporation was to increase Vans's physical presence across the world. The company expanded into Shanghai in 2008 with a retail store and made goals to continue expanding throughout Asia and the rest of the US, specifically the East Coast. By 2009, the number of retail stores had increased by 24 percent to 200 total locations. To further increase revenue, Vans started producing apparel on an accelerated production schedule that was faster than its shoe production timetable. Vans began getting recognition from high fashion brands in 2012 and collaborated with brands including Céline, Saint Laurent, and Givenchy. Vans also expanded its research in shoe technology that year, introducing UltraCush Litetechnology and WAFFLECUP into some of its footwear lines.

In 2016, Vans tweaked its logo by changing the text color from black to red, making the font uniform, and adding the "Off the wall" text logo under the company name. In October 2017, Vans moved its headquarters location to a 182,000 square foot office space in Costa Mesa, California. It houses 500 employees, and the entire space is skateable. In December 2019, Vans established the Checkerboard Fund, a global grant program that provides monetary support to charitable organizations enabling creative expression through action sports, art, music, and street culture.

On December 18, 2023, Vans experienced a cyber attack that affected the company's ability to fulfill online orders in time for the holidays. It was discovered that hackers had encrypted some of the company's systems and collected the personal data of customers. VF Corporation's stock fell by over 7 percent following the news. A ransomware and extortion gang called ALPHV, also known as BlackCat, claimed responsibility for the attack. In January 2024, it was reported that the data of 35.5 million customers was stolen in the attack. It was not reported what kinds of personal data was stolen, though VF Corporation stated that its consumer businesses do not retain the payment and bank account information of customers.