Paul Van Doren wasn’t setting out to build a brand synonymous with the Southern California skate and surf culture, but he did, stepping onto a path with his brother and partners that would lead to a global, billion-dollar business beloved to this day by board riders and beyond.
Van Doren, who co-founded the footwear brand Vans out of a small retail operation in Anaheim more than five decades ago, died on Thursday, May 6. He was 90.
Van Doren wasn’t just an entrepreneur, but an innovator. He and his partners, including brother James, who died in 2011 at age 72, had the unconventional idea to dabble in the retail world after starting the Van Doren Rubber Company in 1966, customizing shoes for customers and creating a loyal following.
“The Van Doren Rubber Company was the culmination of a lifetime of experimentation and hard work in the shoe industry. Like Paul, from the first day of business, Vans was uniquely innovative,” company officials said in a statement. “Paul’s bold experiments in product design, distribution and marketing, along with his knack for numbers, and a genius for efficiency, turned Paul’s family shoe business into an all-American success story.”
Born in 1930, Van Doren was a high school dropout who at 16-year-old started as a “service boy” at a Boston-based rubber factory, according to “Authentic: A Memoire by the Founder of Vans,” released last month.
On a trip to Southern California in the ’60s, the brothers decided to start their own brand, teaming up with friends Gordon Lee and Serge Delia for the new venture.
To be successful, they would have to go into retail to sell products directly to consumers, so on March 16, 1966, they opened a shop next to their manufacturing operations at 704 E. Broadway in Anaheim.
A sign outside read “House of Vans,” a moniker still used and printed on the backs of shoes today.
The styles on the racks were organized in color-coded boxes, with men’s shoes selling for $4.49, women’s for $2.29.
The first day they opened their doors, they forgot to put money in the register. As customers showed up, Paul Van Doren told them to pick out their style, then to come back with the cash when they picked up the shoes later that afternoon.
“My dad has a lot of faith in people,” Paul Van Doren’s son, Steve, told The Orange County Register previously for a past story.
Steve Van Doren, when the brand turned 50 in 2011, detailed the early days when his father and the partners first went into business.
Steve Van Doren, who still works for Vans as the company’s “Ambassador of Fun,” was put to work by his father at an early age. By 10 years old, he was working at the shop, first organizing shoes and painting walls and a few years later as a salesman greeting customers as they entered.
The retail model boomed, with lines forming outside the doors. So more locations throughout Orange County were opened, including the first stand-alone retail shop in Costa Mesa off Newport Boulevard, a shop still there today.
They would also go to swap meets on weekends to sell the shoes.
But more than half of the 10 stores they opened weren’t turning a profit. When their accountants advised shutting down, Van Doren did the opposite and opened more stores.
The more shoes he made, the cost to make them would go down, he figured, his son said.
For the first decade, the company simply tried to stay afloat.
Van Doren, coming from the East Coast, was enthralled with the Southern California lifestyle. He showed up in the early days for a surf contest at the Huntington Beach Pier to mingle with surfers.
When surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku had the idea to turn his blue, Hawaiian aloha print shirt into shoes, Van Doren was happy to make him a pair – the first of countless custom-made shoes the brand is known for today.
In the 1970s, skaters started rolling into the retail shops seeking out the brand’s tough, rubber-sole shoes.
Vans were made with a thick, grippy, waffle-pattern rubber bottom and tough canvas that could withstand the skaters’ kickflips and tricks that would quickly wear down other shoes. And, when a skater’s front-foot shoe wore down from rubbing on the grip tape of the skateboard, Vans would sell them just one shoe as a replacement.
Vans adopted a phrase from skaters: “Did you see that guy get off the wall?”
It started stamping “off the wall” on the heels of each shoe. Soon, it started sponsoring team riders, including some of the sport’s early icons such as Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva.
Kids started drawing checkerboard designs on their rubber soles and the company took note and created its own checkerboard slip-on.
Glenn Brumage, director of business development for the International Association of Skateboard Companies, said Van Doren and the other founders of the brand were accidental heroes who started out just wanting to build a different, less expensive shoe.
“They became – or they just were – part of the fabric of skateboarding and surfing,” he said. “They became so important to us in surf and skate through their constant support. I don’t think they were trying to market their way into the category. They were organically the category.”
Vans was hitting its stride when a young actor, Sean Penn, told producers he needed to wear the shoes in their “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” movie. The movie’s soundtrack would feature Vans shoes on its album cover, propelling the brand into the mainstream.
Vans went from a $20 million to a $45 million business in the ’70s, but the growth happened too fast, too soon. It was creating all kinds of shoes – basketball, break dancing and beyond – and found its shoes sitting in boxes as it tried to reach outside of its core consumer.
In 1984, Vans filed for bankruptcy.
Paul Van Doren had to tell his employees he couldn’t give them a raise for three years. He told everyone to bring pencils from home, because he couldn’t afford to buy pens, his son, Steve, recalled.
The banks wanted him to liquidate, but a judge agreed to let Paul Van Doren bring in a plan every six weeks and make payments.
Every penny owed on the $12 million debt was paid.
Van Doren and the other partners retired when venture investment firm McCown De Leeuw & Co. offered to buy the company in 1988 for $74 million, with the new company taking the brand public in 1991.
In 2004, the company was sold for $396 million to VF Corp., which assured Vans executives the brand would continue to operate on its own.
These days, it’s a multi-billion dollar company with global operations, successful for staying loyal to its core customers – the skaters and surfers who grew with the brand.
The name Vans is on multiple skate parks and it sponsors some of the globe’s biggest surf contests. It also has a strong presence in art and music culture, building a following through the Vans Warped Tour.
Alva, in Van Doren’s memoir, called the Vans co-founder an inspiration.
“He’s proof of the American dream. A mentor and fearless leader, and last but not least, the father we all love and respect,” Alva wrote.
Pro skater Christian Hosoi, of Costa Mesa, said Van Doren’s legacy isn’t about just a shoe company.
“It’s a shoe company that’s about the people. It was about the customer, it was about the riders. It was about taking the information from the pro skateboarders and applying it to the business,” he said. “It was always about his integrity to do things the right way, not to take the short cut, not to do unethical things.
“You can be the best businessman, but to have character is truly something that is rare in an industry like ours,” he said.
Van Doren had retired in Kentucky, but in the past decade moved back to California to be closer to his family, Hosoi said. In that time, Van Doren got to tour stores around the world, experiencing first hand the impact the brand had across the globe, Hosoi said.
“We know how it affected California, but to go around the world and see how Vans has been that effective from a business model – to share the stories around the world, in every country. It’s remarkable,” he said.
Hosoi, still a Vans team rider today at age 53, and Van Doren shared many conversations during those travels, talking about skating’s roots going back nearly six decades and how the brand -– and Van Doren – became a pivotal part of the sport’s past.
“There’s not many people who will listen to the athletes and how they feel with their heart beats,” Hosoi said. “It’s something that is one in a billion – that’s why it’s such a sad day.”
Tributes from Vans fans were starting to appear as news of his death spread.
A website, stuckunderthepalms.com, dedicated solely to Vans loyalists, thanked Van Doren for the “awesome brand that has given us identity and a true sense of community.”
“Always reminding us to be authentic, and do things our own way, while remembering to make it about the people. We will never lose sight of that,” a tribute on the website reads. “Vans has created more opportunity for us, than anything else, and we ultimately have Paul Van Doren to thank for that.”
Duke Edukas, owner of Surfside Sports in Costa Mesa, remembers taking his first trip to Anaheim to get his first pair of Vans when he was a teen back in the late ’60s.
He said he remembers after the brand blew up following the “Fast Times” movie appearance thinking the success would last five years, tops.
But there’s no sign of the Vans brand, created in a small shop in Anaheim by businessmen with a vision, slowing its stride as its legacy lives on, he said.
“It’s a remarkable success story.”
