The incredible success of Birkenstocks – Il Post

For a long time considered only gaudy orthopedic slippers, today they can be seen everywhere and the company is doing so well that it is likely to go public.

According to some rumors reported bloomberg shoe company Birkenstock may soon go public on Wall Street. There is talk of a valuation of between $8 and $10 billion: double what was sold just two years ago to LVMH’s multinational luxury goods sector LVMH’s L Catterton.

This is a huge achievement for a company with a very long history that has grown rapidly in just a few years, primarily thanks to the success of some very popular models both in Europe and the United States, in some cases reaching levels unattainable. The success of these shoes is especially noteworthy when you consider that until recently they were considered ugly shoes par excellence, and today they can be seen in collaborations with luxury brands, they are worn by celebrities and in TV shows, and now they are part of those who want to dress according to fashion.

Birkenstocks were born in Germany as orthopedic shoes and owe much of their fortune to Germany’s widespread passion for long walks, so this type of shoe is particularly suitable for hot weather. Today, they are universally valued not only for their convenience and practicality, but also for their appearance, and above all, they are no longer associated only with the summer clothes of German tourists. Over the years, limited edition designs designed by famous people have been sold and haute couture companies such as Dior, Manolo Blahnik, Valentino, Celine and Givenchy have reinvented them using new materials and colors but always keeping the classic shape.

The German Birkenstock company traces its history back to 1896, when Frankfurt artisan Konrad Birkenstock opened two stores in the city that sold sandals with an innovative foot, repeating its shape.

In the early twentieth century, as shoe manufacturing became increasingly industrialized, he developed flexible rubber insoles that could be inserted into any commercial footwear to create a comfortable fit. Fussbett, literally “foot bed”. Birkenstock’s reputation in orthopedics was built on rubber insoles and Birkenstock’s son, Carl, who took over the family business from a young age, and as an adult he wrote numerous treatises on foot health that included drawings of feet deformed by improper footwear. It was then, with the arrival of Carl’s son, Carl Birkenstock, in the 1960s that the brand began to produce the sandals with cork insoles for which it is known today.

Birkenstock’s transformation from a German orthopedic manufacturer to a global fashion brand probably could not have happened without Margot Fraser, a woman born in 1929 who grew up in Berlin and became a successful seamstress in Bremen. In the early 1960s, Frazier married an American and moved to Northern California; because his legs often hurt, he bought a pair of Madrid model Birkenstocks during a trip to Germany in 1966. As soon as she returned to the US, she contacted Carl Birkenstock to suggest that he import her shoes there.

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The shoe salesmen Fraser suggested to Birkenstocks said the sandals would never sell, so a friend suggested she set up a booth at the San Francisco Health Food Fair. Frazier’s first customers were grocery store owners who were on their feet all day and began selling Birkenstocks, muesli and vitamins on their shelves. Such was the success that the shoe merchants begged her to supply them with sandals, as she told everyone. New Yorker.

Since then, and over the years, the Birkenstocks have been associated with the American and European counterculture, and have had occasional moments of glory. In 1990 in a British magazine Face a fashion shoot was published featuring Kate Moss, who was then unknown to anyone and soon became one of the most famous models in the world, and who is still remembered for her dirty, imperfect and realistic aesthetics, as well as for references to the underground culture that before Since then, it has remained outside the fashion magazines: among other things, Moss wore a pair of Birkenstocks. Then in 1992 designer Marc Jacobs used them for his famous fashion show. grunge designed for Perry Ellis along with Converse All Stars and Dr. Martens.

Things are a little different today, and Birkenstocks are no longer special and alternative shoes in a sense. In particular, some Birkenstock models, such as the Boston clog and the Arizona double strap sandal, became extremely popular. They come in the taste that many define ugly chicthat is, ugly but chic, which is part of a wider trend towards comfortable, bulky and not very elegant shoes, which are liked precisely because they somehow represent a form of break with the standards of the past.

In an interview with New Yorker CEO Oliver Reichert said that as odd as Birkenstocks may seem at first glance, you have to wear them to understand: “You have to try and live the first visual impression, and that’s love ‘at second sight’.” Reichert says the success of this type of footwear is not just a passing fad, but the result of real cultural changes: for example, the fact that women realized that many of the shoes they wear forced them into an uncomfortable and unhealthy posture. . The popularity of Birkenstocks, Reichert argues, stems from a desire to return to a more natural life, which, however, has nothing to do with environmentalist radicalism, but rather with the realization that the human body is built in a certain way.

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This aspect is also raised by the way the Birkenstocks are mentioned in the recent film. Barbie – which contains a series of reflections on how awareness of the feminine condition and aesthetics has changed – in which, at a certain point, the protagonist, played by Margot Robbie, must decide whether to continue living in the ideal world of Barbieland, represented by a pink shoe. in high heels or go to the real world, represented by Arizona sandals. The choice goes beyond the aesthetic factor and has to do with the message that Birkenstocks carry with them: accepting an imperfect but genuine compromise in the face of the excessive standards imposed by society.

In 2022, Birkenstock’s revenue grew by almost 30 percent to approximately 1.2 billion euros, with a profit of 394 million euros. Sales were so strong and surprising that they caught the company by surprise: for example, the huge popularity of suede boston boots on Instagram and TikTok last fall made them almost unavailable in New York.

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Many also attribute the increase in sales to the fact that Birkenstocks have appeared in some very successful TV shows and movies. In addition to Barbiecan be seen in the show Bearwho is highly acclaimed and who chronically works in an impoverished Chicago restaurant where employees wear a clog-shaped Tokio model fastened at the back with a heel.

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