Designer and Retro Trainers at Discount Prices

vansBrand History

Paul Van Doren gained experience manufacturing shoes on the East Coast in the early 1960s, and by 1965 had developed the idea to start up his own plant. Instead of selling his shoes to retailers he wanted to take on retailing activities as well and to sell the shoes he manufactured directly to the public.

In March 1966 he teamed up with Serge D’Elia and Gordy Lee to create the Van Doren Rubber Company, and Van Doren's shoes came to be known simply as Vans.
Later, Van Doren's younger brother, James Van Doren, joined the company. Paul Van Doren and D'Elia owned the majority of the company; James Van Doren and Gordy Lee each had a 10 percent stake.

Vans offered three styles, priced from $2.49 to $4.99, but on the day the first store opened for business, the company had only made display models. The store racks were filled with empty boxes. Nevertheless, 12 customers came into the store and chose the colours and styles they wanted.

The customers were asked to come back in the afternoon, while Van Doren and Lee rushed to the factory to make their shoes. When the customers returned to pick up the shoes, Van Doren and Lee realized that they had neglected to have money available to make change. The customers were given the shoes and asked to return the next day to pay for them.

All 12 customers did.

Over the next year, the company opened a new retail store almost every week. A pattern developed in which Paul Van Doren scouted locations on Monday, signed a lease on Tuesday, remodelled on Wednesday, added shoe racks on Thursday and displays on Friday, hired a store manager on Saturday, and trained staff on Sunday.

Retail operations would generate the bulk of Van Doren's early sales; the stores also enabled the company to get close to its public. Complaints over the early design of the company's rubber soles, which featured a diamond pattern that cracked too easily along the ball of the outsole, led to the addition of vertical lines to the ball area. The new design was patented as Vans' waffle sole.

In the early 1970s a new type of customer boosted the company's fortunes. The skateboarding craze, an outgrowth of California's surfing culture, provided an opportunity for Van Doren to prove its flexibility. When skateboarders began requesting new colors and patterns, the company responded by offering the Era, a red-and-blue shoe designed by professional skateboarders. Vans quickly became the skateboard shoe of choice, beginning the company's long and close association with the sport. Many more colour combinations and patterns were added in the 1970s. A new style, the slip-on, was introduced in 1979 with huge success.

In 1976, ownership of the company was equalized among the four original partners, and James Van Doren was given control of the company's direction. The younger Van Doren set out to expand the company. He was helped by the latest sports craze that was sweeping California, the BMX bicycle: Vans became the shoe of choice among the young BMXers. But it was a movie that gave Vans a national market.

The 1982 hit film Fast Times at Ridgemont High featured the California surfer dude Jeff Spicoli, played by Sean Penn, wearing a pair of Vans checkerboard slip-ons. The film made a star of Penn and launched Vans nationwide, bringing the company's shoes into department stores and independent retailers.
The Vans slip-on craze spawned a variety of licensing agreements, including items such as sunglasses and notebooks. Van Doren also pushed the company deeper into specialty sports footwear, developing baseball, football, umpiring, basketball, soccer, wrestling, boxing, and skydiving shoes. Most companies had already begun to move manufacturing to Asia, where labour costs were lower and environmental regulations were less restrictive, but Vans remained dedicated to domestic production, while expanding product offerings to include a greater choice of widths.

Faced with high labour and expansion costs, and the expense of maintaining the breadth and depth of its line, Van Doren was soon hit by a flood of competitors selling cheap imitations and knockoffs. In response, Van Doren was forced to drop its prices below manufacturing costs. Adding to the company's troubles was a 1984 raid by federal immigration officials, which resulted in the arrest of nearly 150 suspected illegal workers.

Over 21 months, Van Doren lost some $3.6 million, building up a total debt of $12 million. When the company's bank demanded payment on a $6.7 million note in 1984, the company was forced to declare bankruptcy. Conditions for its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization called for the ousting of James Van Doren. Paul Van Doren returned to lead the company out of bankruptcy, which was accomplished in 1986.

In 1988, Paul Van Doren agreed to sell the company in a leveraged buyout organized by the San Francisco-based venture banking firm McCown De Leeuw & Co. The buyout, worth $74.4 million including the assumption of existing liabilities, left Paul Van Doren in place as chairman and Gordy Lee as vice-chairman. Richard Leeuwenberg, formerly with Boise Cascade Corp., was brought in as president and CEO for the company, now renamed Vans, Inc.

In 1989, raids by U.S. and Mexican officials shut down several counterfeit operations that had flooded the market with cheap Vans imitations. Despite losses to counterfeits, Vans' sales topped $70 million in 1990, with international sales rising to 25 percent of sales, and special orders continuing to play a strong role in revenues. The following year, Vans went public, with an initial offering of 4.1 million shares, at $14 per share. Paul Van Doren, while retaining shares in the company, stepped down from the board.

By 1992, however, the recession of the early 1990s, and especially poor earnings performances among the major footwear producers, forced Vans' share price down to $7. Yet, revenues from the company's 70 retail stores and 4,500 independent outlets grew to $91 million, raising net income to $6.5 million in 1992. By then, more than 32 percent of sales came from international exports. But on the domestic front, Vans was losing ground.

In July 1995, the company closed its Orange plant, firing nearly all of the 1,000 workers there. The Vista plant continued operations, but most of Vans' production was now contracted through a dozen or so factories in South Korea.
The introduction of the Vans line of snowboarding boots in 1995 added $7 million to gross sales and within one year gained the company the number three position among the leaders in that market. Deeper expansion into women's and children's lines also produced strong successes.

Vans snowboard boots played a vital role in the company's resurgence as a major contender in the youth sportswear market. Sales of the boots rose from 6,000 in 1995 to over 110,000 in 1996, and almost singlehandedly restored the company to profitability after the near disastrous losses suffered following the closing of the Orange plant. The growing popularity of snowboarding in Europe and Japan also provided the company's overseas business with a significant boost.

In addition to launching new lines of skateboarding shoes named after world-class athletes such as Geoff Rowley and Cory Nastazio, the company also introduced a number of products aimed at women, including the distinctive Compel Tones line, white leather shoes that changed colour when exposed to ultraviolet light. The company also responded to the increasing popularity of women's sports by developing plans to introduce a complete line of women's outdoor shoes by the spring of 2002.

Vans have always had a retro style and are instantly recognisable with a unique heritage and Trainerstation is pleased to bring a selection of shoes from one the great and original names in trainers.