How Crocs made a comeback in China this summer

Wèi Xuě 魏雪 was on her morning subway ride to work when she first noticed it: a pair of Crocs clogs on a fellow commuter’s feet. The plastic shoes were in neon pink, accessorized with a variety of charms, including a chocolate sprinkle doughnut, a Buzz Lightyear (the spaceman from Toy Story), and…a fried chicken wing. The footwear caught her eye immediately, though not necessarily in a positive way.

“There’s a lot going on and it’s almost too much,” Wei, 28, told The China Project. But it was also “intriguing,” she admitted, adding that her curiosity largely stemmed from the person who was wearing the pair — a young woman in a white blouse and gray pencil skirt, with the Crocs being the only exception in otherwise head-to-toe conventional office attire.

“The clash of styles was a bit jarring,” she said about this sighting, which was in April. “Plus, I haven’t seen Crocs for years, and I thought it had gone out of style long ago. But at the same time, the pair looked fun. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

Fast-forward to today. Wei, a customer service representative in Shanghai, now proudly owns five pairs of Crocs in a spectrum of colors. And she loves to share her newfound obsession with people around her. “You won’t believe how many strangers have come up to me out of nowhere and told me my Crocs are cute. They are a great conversation starter,” Wei said. “I’ve been spreading the gospel of Crocs among friends, too, and successfully converted a few into Crocs lovers.”

Once synonymous with being bulky and unsightly — basically the antithesis of cool — the Crocs’s classic, easily slipped-on clogs have been enjoying something of a renaissance in China lately, especially among young consumers and courtesy of Xiaohongshu, the wildly popular social media platform often described as China’s answer to Instagram.

In what has become a cultural phenomenon, Chinese social media sites have been teeming with self-described devotees to the cult of “clogcore,” whose Chinese name 洞门 dòngmén (“hole gate”) is a nod to the brand’s signature design. On various platforms, thousands of posts related to the trend have racked up a total of over 1 billion views, with obsessives earnestly telling those who are still hesitant to take the leap, “You either wear Crocs all the time or have never tried Crocs. Once you have it on, there’s no turning back.”

Its ubiquity is not just online. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Emily Fang, a fashion editor based in Guangzhou, spotted “numerous” pairs of Crocs when shopping at Dongshankou, a hip area packed with sleek cafés and clothing boutiques. “Given how quickly I lost count of how many Crocs clogs I saw, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they are the shoe of the summer,” she told The China Project. “They are definitely in vogue at the moment. Fashionistas are wearing them and now they are considered to be cool.”

For Crocs, the growing popularity of its synthetic shoes has already translated into a major surge in sales. “We have seen tremendous growth across the region and China,” Crocs President Michelle Poole wrote to The China Project in an email. She revealed that in the second half of 2022, the company’s total revenues in China grew 35%, as compared with 2021. More recently, for the second quarter of 2023, the Colorado-headquartered footwear firm delivered a staggering year-over-year revenue increase of over 100%.

Thanks in part to its expanding Chinese fan base, the American brand has raised its 2023 revenue growth outlook from 11% to 14%, equating to roughly $3.9 billion to $4 billion, making the goal of earning $5 billion in 2026 more attainable. According to Morning Consult, a U.S.-based survey and research firm, Crocs was the second-fastest-growing brand in 2022, only behind Meta.

A pandemic miracle

A confluence of factors have contributed to the resurgence of Crocs in China in the past few years, but the biggest was the pandemic. As millions of Chinese holed up at home during the outbreak, choosing comfortable clothes over dressy attire, Crocs steadily crept its way into mainstream fashion.

Wǎnqíng 晚晴, a 21-year-old college student from Chengdu (who requested only her first name to be used), got her first pair of Crocs about 10 years ago, when she was in elementary school. As a teenage girl, she was mostly drawn by the ability to choose the colors that spoke to her. She could also express her individuality with Jibbitz, the official name of the personalized trinkets that can be pushed into the holes of Crocs clogs.

She eventually moved on from what she called “juvenile fashion” and started wearing “more serious shoes,” she told The China Project. “My first pair of Crocs belonged to a phase in my life where I was crazy about neon colors and cutesy stuff. Then one day, for some inexplicable reasons, I looked at the shoes and thought they were hideous,” she said.

But when the pandemic erupted, forcing the university student to leave campus and return home, comfort and pragmatism took over. When it comes to footwear choices, Wanqing naturally fell back to the familiarity of Crocs. “I was reluctant at first,” she confessed. “But it really took no time for them to grow on me. They are just insanely comfortable.” She has two pairs of Crocs clogs she purchased during the pandemic, one in baby blue and one in vivid lilac.

“We are aware and excited that consumers continue to connect with our icon, the Classic Clog. It has been a key part of our strategy to ignite our icon across the world, and in China,” Poole said. She also noted that when COVID-19 lockdowns occurred across China, causing most businesses to halt promotion as consumption declined, her company “invested in its team and in marketing to build brand relevance.”

Unique ugly is the new cool

The pandemic brought a new wave of relevancy to Crocs. But in a post-COVID society, it is the aesthetics that catapulted the American brand to viral fame and cult status in China.

Along with the trends of the early 2000s making a comeback in their full glory and bringing outdated items like digital cameras back in style, young shoppers in China are increasingly reaching for styles they see as “retro.”

As a brand that defined the sartorial statement of that time, Crocs perfectly scratched the nostalgia itch for Wei, who owned her first pair of Crocs clogs when she was nine and adored them back then. Wei’s fascination grew even further after she rediscovered the world of Jibbitz as an adult.

“Customizing clogs with accessories is an addictive hobby. Just when you think you have enough charms to use, you come across another unique one that you must have,” Wei said of her Jibbitz-collecting journey in the past few months, which has resulted in a box of more than 50 button-like charms.

Some of them are official add-ons sold by Crocs, and others were sourced from “bootleg” vendors who have carved out a niche business selling “over-the-top designs,” Wei said. Among her treasured charms, there are crystal hearts and a bowl of ramen, which is Wei’s favorite food.

Currently, she’s waiting for the shipment of a new set of floppy rubber finger charms, which she ordered for the month of Halloween.

“Because I don’t work in the creative industry and my job is pretty tedious, mixing and matching those charms is actually one of the few ways I can be true to myself,” Wei said. On days she feels unmotivated and bogged down by negative thoughts, her Crocs clogs also serve as mood boosters, which allow her to be, in her words, “a little chaotic and overboard — only on the feet, though.”

The most recent addition to Wei’s Crocs rotation is a pair in hot pink, an impulsive purchase she made after watching the Barbie film. Wei said that when riding the subway earlier this month, she spotted another young woman rocking clogs in the same color. They made eye contact in silence, as if “forming an invisible pact about our shared Crocs obsession,” Wei said, laughing.

The Crocs craze has also been magnified thanks to celebrity endorsements and a string of limited-edition collaborations with other designers, who helped the American company dust off its image of a fashion faux pas and transform it into a cheeky high-fashion favorite.

“We are activating a proven marketing playbook to help us grow brand momentum in China and across the world,” Poole noted, citing partnerships with Chinese brand ambassadors like Bái Jìngtíng 白敬亭 and Zhōu Yǔtóng 周雨彤, two young actors with soaring reputations. The company has also been “creating exciting product collaborations with well-known brands that are popular with Chinese consumers, like Pop Mart, Melting Sadness, and Honor of Kings,” Poole added.

In a recent collaboration set to hit the market on September 1, Crocs tapped Chinese-born, London-based designer Feng Chen Wang, who had previously worked with notable brands like Ugg and Converse, infusing her signature futuristic approach to fashion with their classic footwear styles.

It is one of the more than 60 global partnerships that Crocs has set out to launch this year, of which 25% are tailored to regional needs. “We seek out partnerships that are unique to the Chinese consumer, culture, and calendar,” Poole said. “To celebrate the Year of the Rabbit for the Chinese New Year, we worked with the brand Melting Sadness to launch a limited-edition clog featuring the brand’s iconic blue Karoro bunny and melting carrots. We also recently partnered with Pop Mart, bringing the brand’s iconic Crybaby characters to life with fun Jibbitz and a unique clog.”

For Fang, whose job involves identifying fashion trends and making predictions, it was Crocs’s collaboration with French fashion house Balenciaga — namely, the ultra-chunky, foam-platform clogs — that put the once-forgotten brand back on her radar. She recalls that when the product came out, “everyone around me said it was the ugliest shoe they’ve ever seen.” But despite the divisive opinions on the shoes, the collaboration “definitely got people talking,” she stressed.

“The partnership elevated Crocs into the realm of upscale fashion, and even transformed it into a fashion statement,” Fang said. “It’s a super savvy move on Crocs’s part and it worked.”

Once a Crocs naysayer, Fang now describes herself as a full-on Crocs convert. However, unlike Wei and Wanqing, she prefers white and black for her clogs, as they fit her wardrobe better.

China is the world’s second-largest footwear market, accounting for 22% of total global consumption, second only to the U.S. Poole said that although the company doesn’t report percentages of total revenue on a market-to-market basis, “China is a key part of our global business and critical to our long-term success, and we are very encouraged by the clear signs of growing brand heat there.”