Vans shoes: a happily checkered past

It is a simple shoe, really. A canvas slip-on sneaker with a vulcanized basket-weave sole. It has no laces, no grommets, no fancy air pumps, heart monitors or iPod jacks. But it is the blank canvas upon which three generations have shown their true colors -- solids, two-tones, checks, plaids, stripes, watermelons, winged hearts, Santa skulls and peace signs. With versions that cater to fans of the band Slayer, cartoon character Homer Simpson and professional skateboarder Geoff Rowley, this is footwear capable of turning run-of-the-mill men into Imelda Marcos-level shoe hoarders.

It's Vans style No. 98, a.k.a. the "Classic Slip-On," and even though the company makes a range of shoes and mind-boggling number of designs, the story of the 43-year-old brand cannot be told without that slip-on and a certain black-and-white checkerboard pattern that covers millions of pairs -- as well as the facade of the company's Cypress headquarters, the carpeting (and even a barber pole) inside, and the company RV sitting in the parking lot.

That single pairing of shoe and graphic helped transform the company from a factory/retail space in Anaheim without enough product to fill the shoe boxes on the shelves into a global presence likely to become the first billion-dollar skate brand some time in the next two years.

The mixture of luck and strategy that catapulted style No. 98 into its checkered heyday -- and far beyond -- is chronicled in "Vans: Off the Wall: Stories of Sole from Vans Originals," by Doug Palladini, due out June 4. The photo-heavy book traces the label's path to the pantheon of Southern California culture. And in addition to fixing in print the early history of the company -- the way the shoes were adopted early on by skateboarders, the unlikely way that checkerboard pattern found its way to the center of the '80s look -- it does something else that's been key to Vans' success: It perpetuates the vibe that the label is still a small, family-run business.

Jeff Mintz, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, says it's part of the brand's strategy that "no one really realizes Vans is owned by basically the largest apparel company in the world." There's still a family connection -- Steve Van Doren, the 53-year-old son of co-founder Paul Van Doren, is still with the company, as is his sister Cheryl and his daughter Kristy -- but the company has been sold several times, most recently for $396 million in 2004 to Greensboro, N.C.-based VF Corp., which counts John Varvatos, Wrangler and Reef among its vast stable of brands. In its 2008 annual report, VF cited Vans' 18% increase in revenue last year as one of the few bright spots in its portfolio. (The company doesn't break out revenue by brand, but industry sources say last year's revenues probably topped $750 million.)