Why does everyone have vans

But soon, the fashion industry took notice, and that same year Vans released collaborations with Rebecca Taylor and Luella Bartley. Two years later, Vault inked a three-year partnership with Marc Jacobs , which Mills credits as being the fashion collaboration that helped alter the way Vans was seen in the fashion industry.

I think [Marc Jacobs] gave us a whole new spin in regards to how we were perceived by artists and musicians. Anyone in the creative field, I think, looked at us in a different way. When we were working with Marc, he was still the creative director of Louis Vuitton. He was the guy in the industry, he was the kingpin, he was at the top of the mountain.

So, for him to go and work with a small skate brand in California over, say, a big Nike brand or Converse brand or an older, established athletic brand, I think it was pretty eye-opening for a lot of people in that industry.

Vans never pursued anyone in the fashion industry, says Mills; brands approached them. When asked why brands wanted to work with Vans, Pozzebon points to the sneaker designs. You could bring in textiles that you had to make your own shoes.

It was just that natural piece. Skate also made legit inroads into certain corners of the fashion world. Since , the brand has sponsored the Vans Warped Tour, a skate-driven summer music fest that has featured just about every genre, with acts ranging from The Adolescents to Katy Perry to Prophets of Rage.

After a year run, the tour will be its last, but Vans has already begun to put other stakes in the ground. In , the brand opened its first brick-and-mortar House of Vans in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. So the brand walks a fine line: How do Vans maintain its skate bona fides—its status in the subculture that put it on the map—while courting a generation that takes selfie cues from Kendall Jenner?

He says Vans have always been about asserting personal identity. French, who co-authored the recently released Sneakers , says a dynamic rooted in sneaker history itself comes into play with Vans.

Today, Vans is burnishing that DIY ethos with more collaborations than you can swing a deck at. The brand is downright promiscuous, creating bastard Vans offspring of every stripe—and checker. In recent years, Vans has created shoes with everyone from streetwear labels like Supreme and Off-White to designer demigods like Karl Lagerfeld; from pop culture touchstones like Star Wars and Peanuts to iconic musical acts like Metallica and A Tribe Called Quest.

And the designer fashion market has taken notice. Dennis Green. Vans ' sales are soaring. In just over a decade, Vans has grown from a mostly local Southern California brand to a global powerhouse.

Global President Doug Palladini said in a interview with Business Insider that the brand's success is partly due to the emotional connection that young fans have with it. Southern California culture has gone global with an assist from Vans.

Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. Loading Something is loading. Email address. Vans thrives by reaching consumers from the highest boutique level in retailing to the big boxes and everything in between.

Vans has also started building their own boutique retail stores. In March , Vans opened its first-ever standalone Vault store on the Bowery in New York City, highlighting their apex line—Palladini calls it Vans' version of "couture. In addition to the new upscale stores, Vans has a number of other different brick-and-mortar concepts of their own through which they target different kinds of customers. Brand showcase stores, like the one on 34th Street in Manhattan right across from the front entrance to Macy's, are "mall stores on steroids," large spaces that have just about everything Vans carries.

These are "premium high street environments" where the company can justify a lot of square footage because the foot traffic and velocity are so high. Street stores are located on streets in busy retail corridors, like Rush Street in Chicago and Yonge Street in Montreal. Then there is the mall box store that they "reproduce like rabbits," currently with in North America and a few thousand in different formats around the world, with China being the biggest international market.

They also have their outlet stores, which Palladini notes is a great channel for brand discovery. Global consistency with local relevancy is the Vans mantra, Palladini stated. The brand now has stores in over 85 countries, with over 1, stores in China alone, but there is still an incredible amount of consistency in Vans stores all over the world from Beijing to Santiago.

The stores look the same and have the same common thread because it is all one brand, but stores are also localized to highlight local athletes and brand ambassadors, and offer products in different fits and materials that suit the local markets.