AP/Amy Harris
Vans' brand is embedded in both skater and music culture, but the shoes have wide appeal.
- Vans just made a huge leap in popularity on Piper Jaffray's semiannual "Taking Stock With Teens" survey.
- It is now the No. 2 favorite brand overall for footwear among teens, increasing 800 basis points year-over-year.
- The increase came particularly from teenage girls. Vans knocked Nike from the top spot for favorite footwear brands among females in the upper-income bracket.
- The popularity coincides with a staggering sales increase for the Vans brand. Parent company VF Corporation reported that Vans' sales in the Americas were up 34% in the most recent quarter.
Vans are red-hot.
The SoCal skater brand has been a favorite with teens for a while now, but it seems there's no stopping its surging popularity. In Piper Jaffray's latest "Taking Stock With Teens" survey, the firm said that Vans saw the fastest growth in popularity of any brand it has studied since starting the survey in 2000.
Vans is now the No. 2 favorite brand overall for footwear among teens, behind Nike, and it increased in popularity by a whopping 800 basis points year-over-year. It now holds a 19% share for favorite footwear among all teens, which Piper says is the closest another brand has gotten to Nike in "years."
Much of this increase came from teenage girls. Vans knocked Nike from the top spot for favorite footwear brand among females in the upper-income bracket.
Vans has become its own fashion trend for teens, and its styles are cited as the No. 3 trend for both males and females in the upper-income bracket, just below "athletic wear" for males and "jeans" for females.
The popularity coincides with a staggering sales increase for the Vans brand. Parent company VF Corporation reported that Vans' sales in the Americas were up 34% in the most recent quarter, following a string of recent sales increases.
Vans has been popular for a while now, but it wasn't always this way. The brand, which is rooted in 1960s SoCal skate culture, has grown into a worldwide phenomenon under the stewardship of VF, which acquired it in 2004.
In the years since the acquisition, Vans has gone from selling 90% of its products in California to growing its reach across the globe, making the leap to Asia and Europe.