Birkenstocks Set Trends All the Way to Bank
Of course the setting is bucolic. Naturally, while you wait, you pick up Vegetarian Times from the coffee table. And it almost goes without saying, as you dream carnivorous dreams and vow to see if the cafeteria serves tofu, that people walk by wearing smiles and Birkenstocks.
But enough snickering. The fact is that Birkenstocks come in sizes up to 17. The cafeteria serves meat. And if you think these sandals are for wimps, don’t say so around Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who was recently photographed in a pair.
“Real men wear Birkenstocks,” insists Margot Fraser, whose formerly aching feet have made her very very rich.
Fraser owns and operates Birkenstock Footprint Sandals Inc., which has exclusive rights to import the German-made footwear whose name is probably a reasonable response to the word “holistic” on any Rorschach test.
It might make as likely a response to the word “lucrative.” In a fortuitous confluence of marketing and consumer preferences, Americans bought more Birkenstocks in the last two years than in the previous two decades. Fraser will sell more than 1 million pairs this year alone.
Aside from their status as the semiofficial shoe of Northern California, Birkenstocks are interesting because of the unusual business problem they presented, and what their success says about the way some counterculture values have become mainstream.
Birkenstocks are also vivid evidence that California firms aren’t insulated from economic developments that once might have seemed a world away.
The basic problem for Fraser, now 63, was that Birkenstocks were practically the most famous shoes in America, but not many people were wearing them. At $80 a pair retail, they’re also fairly pricey, and lately the strong German currency has made the shoes costlier from the factory.
For the uninitiated, Birkenstocks are basically clunky-looking sandals (there are covered styles now too) with a cork inner sole that conforms to and cradles your foot. Wearers seem to find them very comfortable, but many others know them only as the kind of politically correct footwear you’d expect to see on those fuzzy-looking characters in Edward Koren’s New Yorker cartoons.
To overcome that image, Fraser bolstered her sales and marketing staff, upgraded Birkenstock advertising and added more fashionable styles and colors. The latest catalogue is still printed on recycled paper but features hip-looking models and Birkenstocks in jade, cognac, indigo, cocoa, plum, moss, forest, berry, etc.
There are still lots of Birkenstocks in Berkeley, but nowadays Whoopi Goldberg and Madonna, among other Hollywood types, have been seen wearing them too.
Birkenstocks weren’t always so trendy. Fraser, who’s from Germany and always had foot troubles, was back there for a visit in 1966 when someone at a health spa recommended a weird-looking sandal manufactured by the Birkenstock family, which had been making gesundheitschuhe-- health shoes--for something like two centuries.
In her new shoes, Fraser’s foot problems cleared up. She was soon selling the sandals in health food stores and, eventually, in retail outlets. (Today they’re in Macy’s, Bullocks, Nordstrom’s and the L. L. Bean catalogue.)
As it turns out, Northern California was the ideal place to introduce such a product, and California remains a trendsetter in matters of lifestyle and fashion.
Since 1990, Birkenstock’s growth has been nothing short of explosive. This year’s revenue--about $50 million--will be up 50% from last year’s, which was up 40% from the year before, Fraser says. This year the company moved into 164,000 square feet of covered space (double its previous home) on 92 acres here.
Several factors account for all this growth. Americans are more health conscious than they used to be. Aging baby boomers are increasingly more interested in comfort than fashion. Casual attire is in vogue, even in the workplace. And American men have changed.
“For many years, men in the U.S. were very reluctant to wear sandals,” says Fraser.
Although women still outnumber men 2 to 1 as Birkenstock buyers, more men are coming around. When Birkenstock heard that Schwarzkopf was one, it ordered up a pair in camouflage.
Birkenstock wearers, even those who eat meat, are loyal. At the Birkenstock store on Melrose Avenue--all Birkenstock shops are independently owned--customer Lillian Burton, who teaches handicapped children, says: “They’re wonderful shoes.”
Still, nobody’s likely to mistake the Melrose store for Brooks Bros. A stone’s throw from the Bodhi Tree book store, the Birkenstock shop also carries tie-dyed sarongs, Bolivian bags and colorful garments from Indonesia.
The company claims Birkenstocks are so hot the recession hasn’t hurt business much, although all those Birkenstock knockoffs can’t be helping.
Another problem lately is the preternatural strength of the deutsche mark, which makes the shoes costlier in dollars. To make its costs predictable and average out fluctuations, Birkenstock buys forward currency contracts.
