Vans: History

The vans company bagan with paul van doren, who had started manufacturing shoes over on the east coast in the 1960's. The idea then came to him to develop his own plant and sell his shoes directly to the public instead of retailers, thus making more of a profit.
Van Doren got together with partners Serge D'Elia and Gordy Lee, they took their business to california, where they opened their first retail store in Anaheim,in March of 1966. The company was know as Van Doren Rubber Company, but the shoes became known simply as Vans.
Opening retail stores started small, the first only offering 3 styles of vans, then grew so much over the next year that the company opened a new retail store almost every week. This retail created much of the companies early sucess. It also allowed then to hear public opinion of their shoes, and create a better product. For example, People complained over how easily the diamond pattern of the soles of the shoes cracked to easily aroung the ball of the foot.This led to the addition of vertical lines in the area and the design was then patented as Van's waffle sole.
In the 1970's the company got a huge boost from the growing skatebording craze. Skaters requested new colors and patterns, which led to the Era. The Era was a shoe designed by professional boarders. After this Vans became the skaters shoe of choice and established the companies long association with the sport. More color combinations and patterns were added from just the original red and blue and then in 1979 the Vans slip-on came to be, and was all the rage.
As the company expanded, ownership over the company was then split between not only Paul Van Doren and Serge D'Elia, but Gordy Lee and James Van Doren. Now each had an equal stake in the company. With his expanded share James decided to expand the company, and did with the help of the latest sports craze, BMX. Vans was now the official shoe of skaters and BMXers.
It wasn't until 1982 that Vans became nation wide. The shoes were featured in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie in which the main character was wearing a pair of checker board slip-ons. This movie brought Vans into department stores and retailers all over. This boosted sales and the size of the company, which moved to a bigger factory in Orange, California.
In 1984 the company suffered some tough times, they were having to sell at low prices to deal with the imations coming in from asia,they were going through an investigation for apprently hiring illegal workers and the bottom dropped ot on the slip-on craze. The next months were hard and the company lost millions of dollars and gained alot of dept. The company eventually had the declare bankruptcy. After going trhough chapter 11, Paul Van Doren returned and lead to company out of bankruptcy by 1986.
The company was functioning well, but was a tiring business. Paul Van Doren arranged a leveraged buyout (worth $74.4 million)of the company to banking firm McCown De Leeuw & Co. Paul was placed as chair man with Gordy as vice chair man, and Richard Leewenburg as CEO of the newly renamed Vans Inc.
Vans Inc. continued to grow through the nineties despite numerous run ins with immigration problems. In 1993 Leewenburg was replaced with Walter Sochenfeld, who had pervious successes with his own company Brittania Sportswear, which he sold and then retired. Vans Inc. pulled him out of retirement to head Vans Inc. Schoenfeld helped Vans by moving some production overseas, and fixing minor problems that they were having. Schoenfeld then left in 1994, and was replaced Christopher G, Staff. He did a terrible job and was quickly removed, and Schoenfeld came back to help out Vans Inc. once again.
Schoenfeld made major changes in the company, by eliminating domestic production and switching the company from a company trying to sell what it produced to a company that produced what would sell. It was also here that Vans Inc. first started creating snowboarding boots, and put more interest into women's and children's shoes. All these changes helped revenue climb and put Vans on a steady path for the future(Vans,Inc).