Crocs is one of the year’s best-performing stocks. The colorful foam clogs shares are up 43.2% YTD, surpassing other big names in footwear like Nike, whose shares are down 26.0% in the same period. The humble colorful foam clogs company has also outperformed leading Big Tech stocks from Google parent company Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft, the Financial Times points out.

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The popularity is in its practicality: Although a long-time hit amongst nurses, chefs, pool cleaners, and others working in the food services, medical industry, and hospitality, the characteristically unaesthetic plastic clogs found a new and growing customer base following Andrew Reese taking over the company in 2017. The shoes — described by the salmon-colored paper as a “collision between a flip-flop and a plastic colander — through partnerships with pop stars, rappers, and fried chicken franchises quickly made their way into the cool list.

Crocs also got a pandemic glow-up: Between 2019 and 2022, annual sales tripled to nearly USD 3.6 bn, and the company is expected to pull in USD 4.1 bn in revenue this year — assumingly from everyone’s desire for more comfortable footwear as many of us worked from home.

We’re still far from seeing peak Crocs: Even with an impressive rise in share price since the start of the year, Crocs’ stock remains relatively undervalued, especially when compared to rivals in the footwear industry, according to the FT. On top of this, the prospect of Crocs turning around its HeyDude subsidiary could see the footwear company pushing its stocks even higher.

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