Dansko’s OG style, the Professional clog, was discovered by equestrians Mandy Cabot and Peter Kjellerup in the late ’80s. The duo had recently started a business importing, breeding, and riding dressage horses, and during one of their frequent European trips Cabot spied a closed-back clog that she deemed the “perfect barn shoe” in a store window in her husband’s small hometown in Denmark. (The shoes were easy to get on and off, unlike riding boots.) As Dansko lore goes, the budding entrepreneurs soon began selling the practical and comfortable clogs out of the trunk of their station wagon at equestrian events near their home in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a.k.a. horse country. Word spread among the horsy set and beyond, and Dansko—a mashup of Danish and “sko,” which means shoe in Danish—officially launched in 1990.
Over the ensuing 35 years, Dansko grew from the “little clog company that could” into a cornerstone comfort lifestyle brand spanning clogs, sandals, boots, and sneakers. Along the way, Dansko became renowned for a trailblazing “do the right thing” corporate culture that has served as a beacon for companies in many industries. The brand embraced sustainability practices long before it was fashionable and built LEED Gold–certified headquarters in West Grove, PA. Similarly, in 2007, Dansko became a founding member of B Corp, an organization of like-minded, for-profit businesses that benchmark their practices against the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits. Then, in 2012, the company became 100 percent employee-owned though an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) when the founders decided not to sell Dansko to another footwear company or private equity. (They reportedly turned down a $100 million offer.)
That’s just how Cabot and Kjellerup roll. They are not driven solely by dollars. For starters, they feared that the unique culture they’d painstakingly built would be lost under new ownership. They also wanted to reward their dedicated employees with ownership, believing they would take better care of Dansko over the long term than outsiders. Their gradual exit strategy allowed the founders to hand over the day-to-day reins in 2016, though they remain on the board. Ever the entrepreneurs, Cabot and Kjellerup launched another startup in 2020 in a new industry in their adopted home country of Belize. (See p. 28)
Dansko’s backstory underscores its greatest strengths: a deep and distinct heritage fueled by an everyone wins (employees, retailers, and consumers) business philosophy. Those pillars, along with quality shoes, built the house of Dansko. But, in recent years, the company left its Pennsylvania horse country roots out of marketing materials and took its eye off the style that made it famous (clogs) while pursuing other categories. Dansko just wasn’t as Dansko-y anymore. Kitty Bolinger, who became president in fall 2023 following a 13-year rise through the company sales ranks, realized that all this had to change.
“Rather than nurture our Professional clog and bring it back to a place where it’s relevant, important, and our icon, we went chasing after other categories and lost sight of who we are as a brand,” Bolinger explains. “Clogs are the foundation of our company, and we have to nurture that above all else.” To drive that point home, Bolinger recently gifted the executive team baseball hats with the word “clogs” emblazoned across the front. “We’re bringing Dansko back to its roots and Mandy’s initial intent: shoes for equestrians, which evolved to shoes for women pursuing meaningful work—be it healthcare, teaching, caregiving, etc.—and being comfortable while doing it,” she says. “That’s who we want to be talking to, because that’s where we came from.”
The conversation began about a year ago by doubling down on reinvigorating Dansko’s origin story. “It’s our point of difference and what makes us special,” Bolinger says, noting that marketing materials now feature a very consistent color palette and tone. “All the imagery is shot within an hour of our headquarters, which is very much horse country, which is where we were born. That’s very intentional: We need to come back to what makes us special.”
Also intentional is the focus on clogs as the gateway into Dansko. For too long, the category had taken a backseat. “We had almost an inferiority complex, as if we had to prove that we’re more than just clogs; we literally said that all the time internally and to buyers,” Bolinger says. “Now we look at it as, we’re clogs and a whole lot more.”
The iconic Professional leads the way to this clogs-first strategy. “We’ve doubled down on how we’re speaking to consumers about that style by introducing some richness and character,” Bolinger says. This includes product introductions that mirror sneaker drops. “We’ve been introducing limited-edition styles, and running out is ok,” the exec says. “We’re on a streak of eight to 10 launches. Early on, we’d sell out in 16 weeks. Now they’re gone in eight weeks.” Bolinger says the launches have generated excitement, immediacy, and energy around the brand. “Retailers can’t just pick up the phone and fill in on these styles like they can with our core basics. If they want to sell these styles, they must commit fast, or the styles will be gone.” Bolinger is proud to report that sales of the Professional increased last year for the first time in almost a decade.
Dansko isn’t the first brand to lose focus. There’s a graveyard filled with companies that strayed to the point of no return. The first step is realizing it. The next is doing something about it—before it’s too late. Fortunately for Dansko, Bolinger says, consumers’ bond with the brand’s clogs is as strong as ever. In fact, brand studies indicate that 68 percent of the time consumers come to Dansko through that silhouette. Learning this was the “aha/duh” moment for Bolinger: Instead of trying to reach new customers with sneaker offerings, going up against behemoth athletic brands, Dansko needed to reach consumers through clogs. Sneakers are “a much harder ask, whereas we own the clog market. Shoppers are going to buy our sneakers once they’ve fallen in love with our clogs,” Bolinger says. Stats bear this out: “If we send an email featuring a clog, we’ll often sell 50 pairs within 24 hours. If we send an email featuring a sneaker, we’re excited if we sell six pairs.”
Re-embracing a clogs-first approach has cleared the skies for Dansko and served as a reminder that knowing where you come from is often the best way to find out where you want to go. “This whole process has given us a chance to regroup and focus on what Dansko is great at while still making other styles,” Bolinger says. “We’re very pleased with the progress that we’ve made and the road map it gives us for moving forward.”
What does Dansko turning 35 years old represent to you?
First, I think back to when I turned 35. I had two kids, a good job at Timberland, and felt that I had accomplished a lot. But now I think, man, I was just getting started. I think Dansko is just getting started, too. We’ve accomplished a lot and have been very successful. We’ve also gone about it differently than many of our peers. Mandy and Peter did it right. It’s never been about the money; it’s about what the money can provide to our employees and customers. That’s just one of the many aspects that make Dansko special. We’re also lucky enough to have an icon style and a unique origin story as other points of difference. So I just believe we’re going to keep accomplishing and growing in the years ahead. It’s very exciting. Of course, there will be unforeseen challenges to overcome—like the Financial Crisis and a pandemic. You never know what might happen. But it’s reassuring to know that we’ve overcome many such challenges already. Dansko has the resilience to come back. We’re still standing strong. Not a lot of brands can claim that. Many have been acquired and are now part of a big brand house or private equity.
So the future for Dansko is bright?
Absolutely. We just submitted our five-year plan, and we have high single-digit growth planned for each year. It’s conservative and controllable growth. We’re not putting a 25 percent leap in sales on paper. But we still believe we have the potential to grow steadily.
Is being employee-owned advantageous in terms of projecting steady growth?
The advantage is stability. The decisions we make are really longer term and what’s best for Dansko. We don’t have to worry about reacting to quarterly results. We still have board meetings every quarter; there’s accountability. But it’s not a case where we say let’s push out all that product because we’ve got to make a quarter and we’ll see what happens next quarter. Those types of conversations just don’t happen here.
Does it help that employees can put roots down, knowing Dansko won’t be snapped up by private equity or another company at any moment?
Definitely. If we were ever acquired, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t stay in Southeast Pennsylvania, and Dansko wouldn’t be Dansko anymore. The lives of all these families who work for us would become very different and they certainly wouldn’t be as fortunate as they’ve been. On that note, two members of our executive team relocated from Boston and Columbus when they joined us, and part of the draw was the average long tenure of our employees. We haven’t gone through big rounds of layoffs like many other companies did during Covid.
Now that Dansko has refocused and rediscovered its clog and Pennsylvania horse country roots, what is your outlook for the rest of this year?
Our outlook is very positive because the product is checking and because our strategies, including treating the Professional like the icon it is, are working. That’s all well and good, but when retailers call us saying they have to cancel an order because a big part of their local community works for the government or in a Veterans Administration hospital and they’ve just been laid off…All bets are off. For example, one of our retailers in the Dakotas, a military base town where the VA hospital is a major employer, had half of the staff laid off recently. We sold a lot of Dansko clogs to those employees. Our retailer said she can’t bring in anything right now because of those layoffs.
I’m guessing the buzz saw taken to the Department of Education won’t help with Dansko’s strong customer base among teachers.
That will have a negative impact on us. Stores based in the DC area are also being impacted because of all the government agency cuts. Our industry and business in general continue to be tough. Looking simply at revenue goals, we eked out the year and were fortunate to give everyone in the organization a bonus. It wasn’t a terrible year, but we’re not throwing huge celebrations. We’ve put some of the things we’d like to do—like making bigger investments in marketing—on hold.
How do you manage your business in the face of such epic and unprecedented disruption?
The most important thing right now is to maintain a very open line of communication with our retailers and figure out how best to support them. While I can’t change what our government decides to do today or next week, open communication enables us to walk through any decisions that might need to be made in response. Communication is essential to help our retailers. Thankfully for us, these aren’t huge numbers of pairs that have been impacted so far.
What is Dansko doing in response to the
tariff war?
Like everybody else, there are two things we can do. The first is obvious: work out potential price scenarios. Currently all our production is in Vietnam, and now that there may be 46 percent reciprocal tariffs, in all probability, there will be some price increases. We’re also experiencing price increases from our factory partners because the demand to source in Vietnam is growing. Their workers are demanding higher wages. Different regions of the country have had labor strikes because they know they’ve got more advantageous factories. They’re charging more because of the labor demands, but also because they know they can. So on top of tariff increases, there are those cost increases.
Any reaction from Dansko retailers to these possible price increases?
There have been some questions about price increases. A few even asked if we might be opening a factory in the U.S. I was completely transparent and said no. We will continue to produce in Vietnam for the foreseeable future and our profit margins will shrink. In addition, part of those cost increases will be passed along in the form of higher wholesale prices.
Some think that shoe manufacturing will return to the U.S. on a meaningful scale, even without the necessary infrastructure and trained labor force?
It wouldn’t happen overnight or within months. That’s for sure. What can I say? It’s a very interesting time. We’ve been looking for diversification in our sourcing. We started making wood-soled products in Brazil that just hit at retail and are doing very well. We’re also looking at other countries—Spain and Portugal, to name a couple. But as we can all see, we just don’t know what might happen and no country is safe from tariff hikes.
Looking back to when you became president, did you see any of this epic disruption coming? Did you sign up for this?
We’ve been dealing with plenty of disruption in the past five years, be it wars in Ukraine and the Middle East or the fallout from the pandemic. But this feels like déjà vu all over again. That said, I wish it felt like September of 2023.
Times have changed. Speaking of which, it’s been crickets regarding the Earth Day marketing cycle. Are brands afraid of potential backlash?
Some probably are. Dansko continues to source the way it always has, which is looking for the most sustainable and responsible sourcing partners. Doing the right thing in the most sustainable matter is what Dansko is all about. It’s what Mandy and Peter mandated from the beginning. That won’t ever change. But we also learned, about three years ago, that promoting the fact that our molded product is 60 percent or more recycled material didn’t move the needle. That Earth Day tie-in fell on deaf ears. So we’ve pulled back promoting sustainability attributes except on DTC, where we have the space to do that.
Is it harder to be “Dansko” in such a politically charged environment?
I don’t think it’s harder. We just have to be very mindful that there are diverse viewpoints, and buying shoes shouldn’t be a politically based decision. People of all political persuasions are welcome to buy Dansko. But that doesn’t mean we won’t stick to our long-standing values of high product standards and doing the right thing. We just don’t talk about the latter as much, because any negative reactions just aren’t worth it.
Brands have learned from the Bud Light fallout. That said, I think Dansko’s approach isn’t red or blue as much as it’s doing right by 29
customers, retailers, employees, and the planet. There’s nothing offensive about an everyone wins business model.
I agree. And as a 100 percent employee-owned organization, everybody should have that lens. So if talking about sustainability might anger half the country for reasons that don’t make sense to me…ok, then we won’t, because I have 180 families counting on Dansko not pulling a Bud Light.
Enough negativity. Tell me something positive.
We’re opening our first nameplate Dansko store, aside from our outlet attached to our headquarters. It’s in Portland, OR, in partnership with The Shoe Mill. The soft opening is early May and the grand opening will be in early June in conjunction with the city’s Rose Festival. It will have the total look and feel of a Dansko shop but technically is one of their Footwise concepts. Actually, Shoe Mill is leasing an old Clogs N More space. They thought about opening a Shoe Mill or Footwise there, but then approached us last summer about opening a flagship. It’s very exciting; they’re incredible partners.
Why Portland, specifically?
Our business in Oregon has always been phenomenal. In fact, our team was there recently buying antiques and furniture to make it feel like a warm gathering space, and a lot of people walking by were so happy to see that we were opening a store. It bodes well.
Will Dansko partner with other retailers around the country to open more flagships?
Absolutely. We expect to learn a lot from this partnership. For starters, this store has the opportunity to carry the entire line, including exclusives on Dansko.com. We’ll also double down on being involved in the local community. We want this to be a gathering space. Our hope is that it will all work out, then we can replicate it in other markets where the brand has strength.
It sounds like a win-win for Dansko and Shoe Mill.
It is, potentially. We can get a ton of feedback on Dansko. It’s like a brand lab. And Shoe Mill gets to do what it does best. Also, many of the communities where Dansko already does well have strong retailers. So isn’t it better to work with those partners? On that note, the store manager is a Shoe Mill employee but will attend our sales meetings and be immersed in our processes so they can speak to what we do and how we do it.
Anything else of note in the hopper?
We’re participating in more apparel shows in effort to open more boutiques. That’s more for brand awareness than sales volume. We want to reach our consumer where she prefers to shop, which is our long-term goal of being wherever our customer is. Of course, that’s always changing. For example, I’d have said recently that she doesn’t want to be in department stores, but we’re seeing things turn around nicely at Nordstrom. So maybe she does want to be there, too.
So, is the glass half empty or half full?
It’s half full because we have to think that way. We have to figure out how to navigate any challenges and come up with solutions. We remain on a mission to find moments of joy because Dansko still has plenty of opportunities to do great things. Now it’s just in a world that is contextualized a little differently than we’d like. Regardless, we have as much energy and excitement around our business as ever. I’m reminded of that when I glance at the Shopify app on my phone to see what’s selling. Oftentimes, I’ll notice a spike in sales on the heels of some terrible world news. It reminds be that it’s not all bad. Life goes on and people still want and need our shoes. •
