Cave Shoes Are Ugly. Nobody Wants To Buy Them?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, the most important product of American shoe brand Crocs.

It has aroused great controversy from the date of launch, and now it is being more and more young.

Consumers believe that the hole shoe is ugly and cannot be forgiven. The once worn hole shoes are in a predicament because of the single product.

Crocs, the fourth quarter earnings report was released in the three months ended December 31st.

Continuation of the performance downturn, recorded a loss of 44 million 500 thousand U.S. dollars, sales fell 10% to 187 million 400 thousand dollars, down from Wall Street's expected $189 million 400 thousand.

In the 2016 fiscal year, Crocs sales fell 4.95% to 1 billion 36 million US dollars in the same period last year, gross profit fell slightly from 1.9% to 500 million US dollars, gross profit margin was 48.3%, and net loss was recorded at 31 million 738 thousand US dollars, which is a net loss of Crocs for 4 consecutive years.

According to the financial data, Crocs sold 56 million 100 thousand pairs of shoes worldwide in the past year, compared with 58 million 600 thousand sales of shoes in the 2015 fiscal year by 4.2%.

According to the sales channel, wholesale channel sales decreased by 7.6% to 546 million US dollars compared with 2015, while retail channel sales fell 5% to 359 million US dollars compared with the same period last year. E-commerce sales were the only channel to increase growth, up 7.9% to 130 million US dollars over the previous year.

By region, the brand domestic market is still the main force in the United States, but sales growth stagnates, recording 467 million US dollars, accounting for 45% of total sales.

It is worth noting that sales in the Asia Pacific region, including China, Japan and South Korea, fell by $6.9%3.95 billion, while European sales fell 8.1% to $173 million over the same period.

CEO Gregg Ribatt admitted in a conference call that Crocs's business situation was very bad. By the end of 2018, 160 poor performance stores would be closed, accounting for 29% of the total number of stores.

By the end of 2016, Crocs had 558 stores in the world.

The downturn in performance has also led to a shake up of executives. When Crocs released its earnings report, Gregg Ribatt said it would resign as chief executive. He plans to leave office in June 1st and replace it with Andrew Rees, President, but he will remain on board.

Crocs was founded in 2002 by Scott Seamans, Lyndon "Duke" Hanson and George Boedecker. They noticed that the special material shoes made by Canadian Foamcreations company had good skid resistance and comfortable wearing. Therefore, some original modifications were made to design a pair of shoes originally prepared for rowing.

The shoes are very similar to their slippers, with holes on their vamp and a ribbon that can be skidproof and rotatable.

In the early days of the brand launch, the opponents even used the word "ugly" to describe the products of Crocs due to the appearance of holes.

Crocs took the opportunity to use "Ugly is Beautiful" as its slogan to launch various types and colors of theme shoes, and the small holes on slippers can also be inserted into various small accessories to meet the individual needs of consumers. Once it became a necessary Street product for celebrity stars, it was even known as the summer version of "UGG".

Since then, the company has expanded rapidly and was listed on NASDAQ in 2006.

As a matter of fact, the industry has been querying whether the shoes that exist as functional shoes can be regarded as fashion items.

Steven Marotta, an analyst at CL King&Associates, thinks that the shoes of Crocs are very practical. They are very popular in restaurants and hospitals, but they are absolutely not related to fashion.

Because the Crocs product design is too single, the hole shoe has begun to be rejected by the fashion industry.

The brand has also tried to improve the product design, but the image of the cave shoe has become a fixed design template for the brand, and designers are unable to find new breakthroughs.

In September last year, the British designer brand Christopher Kane tried to launch a series of cooperation with Crocs, trying to make Crocs return to the fashion industry. However, it was unanimously questioned by the industry that consumers did not buy it.

In addition to the shape design of cave shoes is not favored by fashion circles, Crocs is also faced with the threat of a lot of cheap counterfeit products.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, a pair of fake shoes made in China are priced at only 10% of the price of genuine shoes.

Starting in 2008, sales of Crocs products began to decline significantly, and for the first time they recorded losses.

In 2014, in order to prevent the downward trend from deteriorating, the group had to close 100 undesirable stores in the US region and cut 200 employees.

On the latest London Fashion Week, Christopher Kane once again chose to cooperate with Crocs to launch hole shoes with fur. The British media issued a complaint that Christopher Kane's move of Crocs to fashion show could not make the hole shoe acceptable.

Analysts pointed out that, just like UGG, the functionality and appearance of Crocs hole shoes is a fatal injury that the brand can not maintain the steady growth of its performance. In the rapidly changing fashion industry, Crocs is declining because there is no continuous introduction of products that make consumers feel fresh.

Crocs's share price has fallen 30% to $6.9 per share in the past 12 months, with its market capitalization of about $500 million, while the market value of the company's first year has been as high as $5 billion 200 million.

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