Why Crocs Are Perfect

John Duerden, the CEO of Crocs (CROX), must have been peeved to see the front page of the Washington Post's business section yesterday led by this story: "Once-Trendy Crocs Could Be On Last Legs." The article foreshadowed doom for the company known for making rainbow-colored footwear:

The colorful foam clogs appeared in 2002, just as the country was recovering from a recession. Brash and bright, they were a cheap investment (about $30) that felt good and promised to last forever. Former president George W. Bush wore them. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler wore them. Your grandma wore them. They roared along with the economy, mocked by the fashion world but selling 100 million pairs in seven years.

Then the boom times went bust, and Crocs went to the back of the closet.

Duerden wrote a defensive response to the piece on the Crocs blog. He bragged that "there are more than 100 million consumers in 125 countries that love our product." The Croc, once described aptly by Slate's Meghan O'Rourke as "a Tinkertoy on steroids," has gained global renown. Duerden implies that America should be thanking the shoe company for this. Maybe we should be. Crocs has colored the world with millions of clogs and in the process it's also created close to 2.6 billion small holes, also known as business opportunities. And not only are Crocs an important export, they're a powerful cultural symbol, he argues. The people who wear Crocs, Duerden says, are not only making a fashion statement. They're also making a statement about who they are. "Crocs shoes are perhaps the perfect product for a world in which value and simplicity are replacing avarice and over-consumption," he writes. So there, all of you greedy high-heeled, sandled, and sneaker-wearing people. If Crocs fails, with it goes minimalism.