Disclaimer: The English version is an authorised translation of the original article in Mandarin for informational purposes only. In case of any discrepancy, the original Mandarin article by Ah Nel can be found here.
Vans’ success in more recent times cannot only be credited to the hype train Supreme’s partnership brought into the mix. However, the footwear giant’s strength has definitely been bolstered by any smart collaboration that has come their way.
During 2005, Vans started to make their way through a diverse market, that of the music industry. It was a major drop back then when they collaborated with Iron Maiden and launched The Number of Beast Shoe, featuring the album’s iconic cover art.
The triumph of Vans x Iron Maiden showcased the perks of Vans’ daring yet successful pursuit in creative collaboration with heavy metal bands. Although Vans has been involving themselves in skateboard shoe retailing for 40 years, having a fresh start in a heavy metal line of footwear evidently spawned endless new ideas and excitement to the team.
They worked with countless bands and produced numerous designs. Here’s a look at some below:
Personally, I don’t really get the craze. These shoes just lie in my cabinet and I don’t tend to wear them.
Though working on the Metal Band collection was blissful for the footwear company, ideas for the collection were limited and eventually reached its bottleneck. Shoe sales were also reported poor due to the lack of influential music bands around that time. Instead of ending the series, Vans gave their last shot by approaching Beatles to be incorporated into their last music series collection.
Fortunately, Vans was able to score and set an unprecedented record for themselves through the famous Vans x Beatles collection. But as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. Designers were losing their enthusiasm towards the series and Vans had to move on to other creative pursuits.
They then decided to capitalise on the Star Wars trend.
It just so happened adidas also collaborated with Star Wars before, and Vans was taking cues from adidas to break their limit.
2010 adidas x Star Wars
The Vans x Star Wars collection was produced in mass quantities, but with such a massive market for Star Wars-related products this worked out well for Vans. We can see that this strategy worked as expected, but what was next?
Vans repeated the strategy of capitalising on trends and big names by collaborating with Disney.
Vans was really smart at selecting which fictional characters to use for their designs, as well as when to use them. Before that, they even produced cute collections like Hello Kitty and Snoopy.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of cartoon character appeal; thousands of Hello Kitty Vans pairs, for instance, flew off the shelves.
I really anticipate Vans’ next collection. I know what’s coming, but it’s something I can’t reveal just yet.
So far, what I’ve highlighted are the design aspects – on the back of these collaborations – that have driven up Vans’ sales. What we will be focusing on next is more on their experimental collection. You will see that Vans is willing to explore pretty much anything.
Vans x Golfwang
Tyler The Creator, regarded as God’s favored and he is always rocking on a Vans pair when performing. Of course Vans didn’t let the opportunity slip and engaged in a few collaborations.
One quick question, is he famous in Malaysia?
Vans x Takahashi
An almost neglectable collection at a glance, but somehow they will surprise us. Like below, would you think this is a Vans shoe?
Can you imagine this is Vans?
Vans X CLOT
He is the pride of the Chinese, Edison Chen. Clot’s products usually sell like hot cakes.
Vans x Diamme
Originally Italy, crafted in premium leather and priced at USD400.
Vans x Kenzo
Is Vans helping Kenzo in this collection? Or vice versa? This project is pretty.
The “Flying Tiger Kenzo X Vans”has the highest exposure.
Vans OTW was an experimental collection but too bad they stopped pursuing it:
The Vans OTW Tenant, they look pretty identical huh?
What I wrote is just a brief part on how they became a favourite brand, and the effort they put into making it so. A brand is easy to build but hard to maintain. Not just any brand can bring an ordinary slip-on shoe to the world stage.
Lastly, lets come back to the music series.
When the world’s eyes were on Kanye, he wore Vans. He looks like a “heavy metal music” person, but we’re not sure if he really loves the music or this is just to project a certain image. In any case, it isn’t odd to see him wearing Vans. He is a smart guy; we can smell that something big is dropping.
Vans is fortunate enough to have Kanye and Tyler to bring them further. We are expecting more design fireworks from Vans!
