VANS AND PROPER - NAUTICAL... BUT NICE!

You’ve also got the custom ‘Customade By Proper’ box as well. That’s something I think we’ll see less and less as belts tighten and money becomes an issue with production. Was a new box hard to sell?
Actually it wasn’t difficult to get them to agree to, if anything, they probably wanted us to do an even nicer box in terms of weight or material. We have always liked their early box designs and the last set of shoes that we did came in a crazy 1980s inspired box that they hadn’t used in a long time. This time around we took one of the early Van Doren boxes as the starting point which we felt was representative of the simple design of the shoes. We also chose to use their standard box so it doesn’t increase the cost at all – we didn’t want to do anything that would cause the shoes to retail at some absurd price.

I’m just wondering if you have any further observations about the industry? It feels like a lot of stuff has changed in the game this year...
A lot of things have changed from the consumer’s standpoint but unfortunately, product-wise, things definitely feel a bit stagnant, almost as though some of the brands have failed to keep in pace or in touch with changes in what people are wanting. It takes quite some time for product to react to change due to the long leadtimes involved with production, and it seems as though many designers are looking at what is going on now as opposed to what is coming next. Simply subscribing to the different color forecasting services isn’t enough, brands need to get back into touch with their core consumers.