Crocs, Inc. President and CEO, John McCarvel, Shares the Story of Crocs, an “Iconic Shoe Company”

When John McCarvel put on his very first pair of Crocs in 2004, his wife practically laughed him out of the room. “I proudly wore them into the house, and my wife looks at me and says, ‘What are those? That’s gotta be the ugliest footwear I’ve ever seen,’” joked McCarvel to the November 7 Voices of Experience audience.

McCarvel had traveled to Colorado in 2004 to ski with friends when he met founders of the budding shoe company at a dinner. They convinced him to slip into a pair of Crocs’ signature rubber clogs—and the rest is history.

In early 2005, McCarvel joined Crocs as vice president of Asian operations, becoming the first Crocs employee to be located in Singapore—where he had spent more than a decade of his career. Eventually, McCarvel became the company’s CEO in 2010.

McCarvel joined the company as it was poised for tremendous growth. Between 2005 and 2007, Crocs grew to become a $850 million company, selling 48 million shoes in more than 100 countries. The company’s 2006 IPO remains the largest in the history of the footwear industry. Crocs also acquired several companies, including Jibbitz, a maker of shoe charms, Bite Footwear and Tidal Trade.

But McCarvel admits that it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. By all measures, 2008 was to be Crocs’ billion-dollar year. The company built 60 million pairs of shoes and began selling Crocs in every major retailer in the country—even in gas stations. Suddenly, shoes started coming back from retailers because “the brand had gone cold. People thought we were going to go out of business. We nearly ran out of cash globally.” At the end of 2008, Crocs had 27 million shoes sitting in inventory.

So, Crocs liquidated their excess inventory. The product development team began to expand the product line to include winter boots, sneakers, fuzzy booties, loafers and much more. And the efforts worked. At the end of the third quarter of 2011, McCarvel reported the company held $220 million in cash and no debt. “This is a huge accomplishment for this management team, to have gone from a day where we had no cash and no one, really, that saw any future in this brand, to one today that has a market capitalization of over $2 billion and $220 million in cash.” In the past two years, Croc’s growth rate has exceeded 30 percent annually.

Crocs is fast becoming the go-to brand in the lifestyle shoe space. In 2011, the company is on track to hit $1 billion in revenues. For leading the company’s successful turnaround, McCarvel has received widespread recognition, including a Stevie Award for Turnaround Executive of the Year at the 2011 American Business Awards.

McCarvel’s Voices of Experience talk concluded with a video about the Crocs Cares program, which has given away close to three million pairs of shoes to people living in impoverished areas in more than 40 countries. “It’s really nice to be in a place where we can give back,” said McCarvel. “It’s part of the fabric of what we do and what we believe in.”