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Clogs Put Their Best Foot Forward
The Wall Street Journal, Jul 22, 2005
WHEN 36-YEAR-OLD Teri Henderson visited New York two weeks ago, she strolled the streets of midtown Manhattan in her most stylish shoes — a strappy pair of bright yellow flats. The latest from a high-end shoe designer? Not quite. Ms. Henderson’s feet were clad in a pair of plastic clogs more commonly found in a restaurant kitchen or hospital. “People kept coming up to me on the street, asking, ‘Where’d you get those?’ ” says the Des Moines, Iowa, medical-records technician.
Once part of a boring institutional wardrobe, rubber and plastic clogs are now high-style items, as makers push new models that come in bright, nontraditional colors such as hot pink and fluorescent yellow. Online shoe retailer Zappos.com says its spring and summer sales of rubber clogs have doubled since last year. Nordstrom now carries several brands including Crocs, which the Seattle department-store chain started selling in December for $30 to $40 a pair. Tim Johnstone, chief executive of Anywear Shoe Co., makers of a traditional-style $40 gardening clog, estimates he has seen a 20% increase in demand from a year ago.
According to NPD Group, a market researcher, U.S. sales in the “active casual” shoe segment were $6.8 billion for the year ending May 2005 — an increase of 15.7% from the previous year. And consumers are not only spending more on footwear, they are also buying more pairs of shoes. In 2001, U.S. shoe sales averaged 6.4 pairs per consumer. In 2004, the average was 7.4 pairs, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.
The new clogs on the market get attention for their eye-catching hues, but their appeal runs deeper. People who spend a lot of time on their feet, such as nurses and chefs, have long prized clogs for their foot-friendly design. “Shoes have always been fashionable,” says Chris Abess, a consumer analyst with Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco. “But lately there’s both a fashion component and a performance component to footwear.”
Many of these next-generation clogs — such as Crocs, Payless’s Airwalk Compel and Birkenstock’s Birki Fun Clog — are made of foam or plastics like ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA), which weigh less than traditional rubber shoes. The shoes also have ventilation holes, so feet don’t get as clammy as they would in solid rubber clogs. Footwear maker Sloggers will introduce a clog next summer that weighs 14 to 16 ounces a pair, 30% less than its Classic Garden Clog. Quark Footwear plans to release an EVA model this November called the Liberty that will weigh 6.8 ounces a pair and will come in colors with names like “calm blue” and “limeaide green.”
Ms. Henderson has been an enthusiastic convert to the clog cause. Since she got her first pair in December, she has purchased 10 pairs in varying colors. Josh Peay, however, hasn’t felt as comfortable. The 35-year-old videogame developer from La Jolla, Calif., bought a pair of green clogs in January, but he hasn’t cottoned to the bulbous look and the bright hues. “They’re kind of goofy-looking,” he says.
Candace Jackson
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