Vans’ one wrong step

Although Vans is famous for the canvas slip-on, the shoe didn’t come along until the company was more than 10 years old (its first offering was a lace-up deck shoe). But one attempt to broaden its line was far less successful, recalls Steve Van Doren, son of Paul Van Doren, who founded Vans with his brother Jack and two other investors.

“In 1982, my uncle decided we should do athletic shoes -- we actually had two shoes in Runner’s World -- and we ended up with running flats, basketball, volleyball, wrestling and even break-dancing shoes. We poured all the money from the [success of the] checkerboard into that stuff, but it wasn’t us,” he said. In 1984, Vans was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (it emerged 14 months later).

The opportunity to expand the brand -- especially into apparel -- was one of the things that made the label an attractive purchase to clothing maker VF Corp. When it bought Vans in 2004, apparel sales -- mostly T-shirts and hats and fleece -- made up about 10% of sales. By 2008, clothing had doubled to 20% thanks to such new items as woven shirts, bikinis, women’s sleepwear and even selvage denim. And mercifully, not a single wrestling unitard or line of neon-accented break-dancing togs.

-- Adam Tschorn