The Holey Clog Stepping Past Pandemic Chic

Like Peloton, Etsy and Zoom, Crocs saw its business boom during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s aesthetically questionable but easily slipped-on clogs were the perfect footwear for Americans puttering around their homes, gardens and kitchens during quarantine.

But while many people got off their exercise bikes, cut back on D.I.Y. arts projects and resumed in-person meetings as a sense of normalcy returned to the world, they have kept their Crocs on.

Maggwa Ndugga of Raleigh, N.C., bought his first pair in 2020 and now has five. And he is spreading his enthusiasm, giving his parents and sisters each a pair for Christmas.

“They’re not the most appealing things to look at,” Ndugga, 25, said, but they offer support to his flat feet and can be worn whether he’s working at his standing desk at home, running errands, hiking on the weekends or lifting weights.

“I roll into the gym with my Crocs on and everything, and people ask, ‘Aren’t you going to change shoes?’” Ndugga said. “No, this is how I’m going to live life for now.”

Fans like Ndugga — along with celebrities like Questlove, who has been known to sport the clogs at award shows — have helped Crocs emerge as a rarity in the business world. It is a pandemic winner whose success might outlast pandemic shopping behavior.

The stock prices and sales of Peloton, Etsy and Zoom have dropped since their sharp rises in the pandemic, but Crocs’ stock has soared 167 percent since January 2020. The company’s annual sales have increased 200 percent since 2019.

At a recent conference in New York held by the wealth manager UBS, Andrew Rees, the chief executive of Crocs, said he often heard from the investment community that “Crocs was a pandemic beneficiary and it’s going to return to its norm.”

“There is very little chance of that happening, quite honestly,” Rees told a room of investors and analysts.

Last month, after announcing that quarterly sales rose 61 percent, Crocs said it anticipated another record year of growth. Its management team laid out an ambitious business plan that promised more robust profits and revenues when many in the retail industry are trying to temper investor expectations. (Part of the surge in overall sales is coming from the company’s acquisition of the footwear brand Hey Dude.)

Crocs said in November that it expected revenue from its namesake shoe line to reach more than $5 billion in three years, a nearly 90 percent increase. It sees its adjusted operating margin staying around 26 percent even as other consumer companies are feeling a squeeze in their profits.