Crocs Value Chain

Crocs Value Chain

Crocs entered the shoe market with a new style of brightly colored footwear. Crocs designed and manufactured footwear for all age groups. Utilizing an innovative value chain supported the phenomenal growth of the company. This paper will discuss the company’s leadership, flexible supply chain and product diversification and how these aspects contribute to the overall value chain of the company.

The Beginning

Crocs began in 2002 by introducing a revolutionary boat shoe. The shoes became successful very quickly and the company founders decided to work with an old friend, Ronald Snyder, who had experience in manufacturing, purchasing companies, and merging the purchased companies (Crocs: Revolutionizing, 2007). One of Snyder’s initial decisions was to buyout the Canadian shoe manufacturer, Finproject NA. Completing this purchase allowed Crocs to control the proprietary material for the shoes. By owning the raw material to manufacture the shoes, Crocs controlled the initial step of the value chain.

Once Crocs owned the formula for the shoe resin, the company used this to select contract manufacturers for making the shoes. Crocs were now manufacturing shoes in the original Canada plant as well as a Chinese manufacturing facility. Once the facility in China was established Crocs entered the foreign market. After entering the markets in Asia and China Crocs extended capacity with new contract manufacturers in Florida, Mexico, and Italy (Crocs: Revolutionizing, 2007). The addition of these sites provided a global supply chain which lowered costs and ensured value to consumers (Marks, 2008).

A new supply vision

The creative supply chain used by Crocs meant the manufacturers of the footwear had to...

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...ears, the Crocs model has not proven as effective. Crocs has changed the strategy to accommodation the lower product volumes (Gonzales, 2009).

Crocs should evaluate their organizational processes. Some of the processes once utilized by Crocs are no longer as effective. Management must work towards better demand forecasting, collaborating with value chain members, and how to best evaluate performance (Robbins and Coulter, 2009). By integrating all three of these items Crocs will adjust the value chain to support continued success. Finally, Crocs must have enough forward thought to sustain market changes and utilize feedforward control to prevent future problems. The leadership, flexible supply chain and diversification discussed here can still be employed for long term success as long as Crocs is willing to continuously evaluate the current value chain.