The holes the critics mocked turned out to be the point: Jibbitz charms made a molded foam clog into something wearers personalize, and the day sits at the peak of what fans call Croctober.
National Croc Day has no documented founder or formal establishment record. Crocs, Inc. credits its social-media superfans, a group it calls CrocNation, with first claiming the #NationalCrocDay hashtag in 2017; the company then leaned in, releasing a limited gold clog on October 23, 2018, and later building its month-long Croctober campaign around the date.
In 2010, TIME magazine put a shoe on its list of the 50 Worst Inventions. The verdict was blunt: "they're pretty ugly." It was the only shoe on the list.
That shoe was the Croc, the perforated foam clog that boaters bought, nurses swore by, and fashion critics loved to hate. National Croc Day lands every October 23, the peak of what fans now call Croctober.
No one is on record as having founded the day. It started as a hashtag, on the feeds of people who liked a shoe the rest of the internet kept dunking on. The strange part is what happened next: the same clog that topped a worst-inventions list went on to sell out at Barneys and anchor a brand that now takes in $4.1 billion a year.
DEALS & OFFERS
National Croc Day ran on October 23. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
The Croc began as a boat shoe. Around the turn of the millennium, three friends from Boulder, Colorado, Scott Seamans, Lyndon Hanson, and George Boedecker Jr., went looking for footwear that would not slip on a wet deck or mark it up. Seamans had found a lightweight clog made by a Canadian company, Foam Creations, molded from a closed-cell resin that softened with body heat.
They brought it to the 2002 Fort Lauderdale Boat Show under a new name, the Beach. All 200 pairs in that first batch sold out. The clog was loud, light, and full of holes, and it did not look like anything else on the dock.
Word spread off the water fast. Nurses on long shifts, line cooks, gardeners, and parents found the same thing the boaters had: the foam was cushioned, washable, and oddly comfortable. To lock up the material, Crocs bought Foam Creations in 2004 and kept the resin, branded Croslite, for itself.
In February 2006 the company went public on the Nasdaq, pricing its shares at $21. That same year it paid $10 million for Jibbitz, the snap-in charms a Colorado couple, Rich and Sheri Schmelzer, had started making after decorating their kids' clogs.
Then the bottom dropped out. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the shoe everyone suddenly owned was the shoe no one needed to buy again. Revenue fell to $721.6 million, and a company that had posted a $168.2 million profit the year before swung to a net loss of $183.6 million.
The stock, which had traded above $70, sank toward a dollar. Crocs looked like a fad caught mid-collapse.
The rescue came from the last place anyone expected: high fashion. In 2017, designer Christopher Kane sent marbled Crocs down the runway at London Fashion Week. Months later Balenciaga showed a five-inch platform version in Paris that reached stores in early 2018 and sold out at Barneys.
In late 2018, Post Malone's first Crocs collaboration vanished in seconds. The shoe that critics had buried was now the one people lined up for.
The day itself sits at the end of this arc, not the start. Crocs says its CrocNation superfans claimed the #NationalCrocDay hashtag in 2017, the same year Kane put the clog on a runway. The company adopted the date the following October with a limited gold clog, then wrapped the whole month into a campaign it calls Croctober.
No founder signed it into being. The fans named the day; the brand made it a marketing season.
BY THE NUMBERS
TIMELINE
MYTH VS FACT
National Croc Day honors the crocodile.
Despite the name, the day is about Crocs the foam clog, not the reptile. The footwear brand took its name from the crocodile, an animal at home on land and in water, but the observance celebrates the shoe and its culture of charms and collaborations.
Crocs created National Croc Day to sell shoes.
Crocs, Inc. credits its CrocNation fans with first claiming the #NationalCrocDay hashtag in 2017. The company adopted the date afterward with a limited clog and its Croctober campaign, but it points to the fans, not itself, as the starting point.
AT A GLANCE
Test your knowledge
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
A shoe named a worst invention came back to earn billions.
A shoe written off as a fad and named a worst invention came back to anchor a multibillion-dollar brand. The day is a hook for a case study in how a polarizing product outlived its own obituary.
The holes that critics mocked became the point. Jibbitz charms turned a molded clog into something wearers personalize, and the day centers that act of making a mass-produced shoe your own.
National Croc Day did not come from a boardroom. Crocs credits its own fans with claiming the hashtag first, a small example of how an audience can create an observance a company later adopts.
GET INVOLVED
EDITOR'S PICK
WEAR
READ
SETTLE
PASS
National Croc Day is observed every year on October 23, the peak of what Crocs fans call Croctober.
COLOPHON
It's time to kick off your shoes and enjoy National Flip Flop Day - don't forget to grab a pair of your favorite flips for the occasion!
Put on your chucks and pearls, it's time to celebrate the perfect combination of casual and classy for Chucks-N-Pearls Day!
Break out your best brown shoes and strut your stuff on Wear Brown Shoes Day - the perfect excuse to add some style to your step!
