Why Americans Are Fixated On These Unattractive Sandals

 Why Americans Are Fixated On These Unattractive Sandals

The feet of Margot Fraser ached. When she did, she brought Birkenstocks to the United States. The corporation is now valued in the billions of dollars.

The image of Margot Robbie's Barbie wearing Birkenstocks is among the most recognizable from the biggest film of the year.

Margot Fraser was the only reason she was wearing them.

One of the most unlikely businesspeople of her day, she was in charge of introducing the extremely cozy, seductively ugly German footwear to the United States.

In the 1960s, she was an unintentional entrepreneur who began selling Birkenstocks from her house in California, when no one understood what they were or how orthopedic shoes might relieve foot discomfort. Only health food shops would sell these, and each pair may as well have had a jar of granola in the package. She was a seamstress who had no experience with shoes, much less crunchy ones. Despite this, she built the business from scratch to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Mrs. Birkenstock would even become a nickname for her.

She brought sandals to Americans, and the company has grown far more than Fraser could have imagined. Birkenstock's market capitalization at the time of its IPO this week was $8.6 billion.

Given that the U.S. business of Birkenstock has always been centered on the demands of women, it is appropriate that its debut public offering follows a summer in which their purchasing power reigned.

Margot Fraser, the most significant woman in the history of the organization, is much to blame for it. It paid good for her to pay attention to ladies. They were her very first clients. Additionally, they were her top clients. Financial records for Birkenstock mention "the breakthrough of modern feminism" as a significant factor in the company's success, and the company's private equity investors include the attractiveness of its goods to women as one of their investment criteria. In actuality, according to Birkenstock, 72% of its consumers are women.

It's an astonishingly high percentage for a business that specifically pitches its goods as unisex. These were on Steve Jobs. Sneakerheads want them. They were created by Karl Birkenstock, a Carl and Konrad Birkenstock's descendent who carried on the family's shoemaking legacy that began 249 years ago. More recently, the wealthy chief executive of LVMH's luxury empire, Bernard Arnault, purchased a majority share and floated the business with his family office and private equity firm.

Because of its relationship to one of the wealthiest men in the world, everyone may now hold shares of BIRK, but Birkenstock would not have reached this position without a trailblazing woman.

When she passed away in 2017, the head of the business' American branch said, "Margot and the foundation she built are responsible for the brand's success that it is today."

She was the first to acknowledge that she was an unlikely CEO in the footwear industry and that she had to gradually learn how to operate the company.

She once said, "I knew nothing about shoes." I was aware that my feet were always aching.

But she didn't need to know anything else. She reasoned that millions of other women around the nation must also have constant foot pain.

Fraser, who was born and raised in a war-torn Germany, had a great understanding of the American customer. Despite the 1930s primary school principal's advice that "girls were capable of anything and should follow their dreams," not everyone in her life shared this opinion. Fraser said in a book that offered business advise that his mother believed all of it to be silly feminist nonsense. Neither was her father precisely Betty Friedan. She told him she wanted to go on business trips across the globe and prove to people that "not all Germans were bad," and he said, "My dear, you could never do that as a woman."

She enrolled in a dressmaking program before relocating to the country to sew clothes for farmers who paid her with eggs and butter. The kid had his or her first experience with business. She made the decision to leave home in order to pursue her childhood goal after realizing that there was no future for her in Germany after World War II. She left with $25 in her pocket and boarded a transatlantic ship.

Fraser didn't find the shoes that would save her feet and change her life until she went back as a tourist almost 15 years later.

She was a resident of the United States when, in 1966, she traveled to Germany for a spa vacation and saw "sandals that weren't pretty to look at." She put on her first pair of Birkenstocks, nevertheless, after spending years trying everything to relieve her sore feet, even standing on a phone book and squeezing it with her toes.

Within months, she was pain-free.

Fraser understood that the uncomfortable shoes she wore were the reason her feet ached all the time. Women wearing tight-fitting heels with pointy toes would not have been helped by standing on phone books. These leather, cork, and footbed-equipped footwear that the Birkenstock guys created did make a difference for Fraser. They were following in the footsteps of Johannes Birkenstock, who first appeared in church records of a community close to Frankfurt in 1774. Fraser wore the company's first pair of sandals, which were introduced in 1963.

She didn't give a damn about their appearance since they were so comfy. Birkenstocks were valuable because they gave a solution. In essence, they were Hokas for hippies.

Fraser brought the footwear back to the United States and emailed the Birkenstocks to inquire about selling them to Americans. They gave the dressmaker their consent. It first seemed foolish. She was ignored by local shoe shop owners, and physicians saw her as a danger to the podiatry industry.

She was in a difficult situation when a friend informed her that the Health Food Association was holding a national conference close by. As a result, she ended herself pitching sandals to folks selling lentils at a hotel in San Francisco.

She had to discover folks who didn't care about the appearance of their shoes. They turned out to be the kind of individuals that ran health food businesses. They chose functionality above fashion since they were on their feet all day. Fraser seen a lady at the conference shuffle about in nylons and lugging shoes she couldn't wear, and she realized there would be a demand for Birkenstocks.

She said, "The woman tried on a pair and bought them in spite of her husband's protests."

Once she had a footing, Fraser started her distribution business, Birkenstock Footprint Sandals, in 1967 and operated out of her house in the Bay Area. Later she changed the name to Birkenstock USA.

She couldn't have chosen a finer location or moment for Birkenstocks to stomp into the United States. The sandals would ultimately have crossed the ocean, but since they arrived in the center of the counterculture—a time and place when individuals were allergic to the mainstream and eager to wear their antiestablishment views on their feet—they became a symbol of resistance. The keeper of Birkenstock's historical archives, Andrea Schneider-Braunberger, said, "It was this perfect moment." The society was prepared for such cutting-edge, unconventional shoes.

Fraser shared the Birkenstock family's total enthusiasm with Birkenstocks and had a strong working relationship with them. Based on her input, they made choices and shoes for the whole firm.

She saw a funny-looking sandal, calling it the "Original Birkenstock-Footbed sandal," but Fraser warned her German companions that American ladies would never purchase anything with the name "Original Birkenstock-Footbed sandal." She gave them some marketing advise, and they decided to call the single-strap sandal "Madrid." It continues to be a top seller for the business.

Fraser had to wait six years before moving beyond natural food shops and into true shoe stores. But that time also worked in our favor. People were prepared to purchase Birkenstocks by that time, and she was more effective at marketing them.

She was aware of how appealing they were to baby boomers who want to distinguish themselves from their parents. It so happens that their offspring don't mind resembling them. The company's Arizona sandals and Boston clogs may be found at high schools and retirement communities, and millennials and baby boomers now account for about the same amount of Birkenstock's customers.

Additionally, the company has hardly changed since she sold Birkenstock USA to her workers and retired in 2002. Later, it was incorporated into the German parent business, which is now led by Oliver Reichert, the first CEO who is not a member of the Birkenstock family. L. Catterton of Arnault made a 2021 investment with an eye on its IPO this week.

Birkenstock has extended into shoes such as boots, sneakers, and sandals made of waterproof, wool, and shearling materials. Its unabashedly dowdy sandals, created to liberate women from the constraints of fashion, have evolved into something classy enough to be worn by models, celebrities, and in Manolo Blahnik collaborations. They are now being stepped on by those who formerly looked down on them. The United States is also the company's largest market.

Without Margot Fraser, none of it would have been possible.

And neither would the curtain call from "Barbie."

Fraser would have been thrilled to see what is on the feet of another lady called Margot since she was always pleading with her partners for additional colors so that she could sell more sandals to more Americans.