The Business of Birkenstock

In a grand documentation by New Yorker, we get everything we would want to know about the ubiquitous Birkenstock. The fashion geek in you will be happy -- or jealous as if you had wanted to have made the tedious work instead.

No wonder the Birks resurgence has reached the Philippines because we like something basic yet interesting on our feet.

The timeline:

Foundation

1774

• One Johann Adam Birkenstock was registered as a shoemaker in a town outside Frankfurt.

Late 19th century

• His descendant, Konrad Birkenstock opened two shops in Frankfurt and made shoes -- no sandals yet.His innovation was to make shoes with insoles that were, rather than normally flat, actually contoured and thus provided better support.

Evolution

Early 20th century

• Konrad's other important innovation: flexible rubber insoles that were to be inserted into industrially-produced shoes, and they have a name for it: Fussbett, or “foot bed.” 

• His son Carl also got into the business of foot health and health-oriented kind of footwear. . 

The Sixties

• Birkenstock the company began making sandals.

• Lore has it that Carl's son Karl is the scientist behind a "blend of cork and latex to produce a material that was light, resilient, and supportive", which he came up by baking in the family kitchen.

• The Madrid was born. Birks sandals number one "had a contoured cork foot bed and a buckled strap that crossed in a band at the toes. It was an exercise sandal rather than a fashion item: the shoe was supposed to feel as if it would fall off unless the wearer constantly gripped the contoured toe bar, toning the calf muscle in the process."

Comeback

October 2012

• Phoebe Philo at Céline sent her models down the runway wearing Arizona-style sandals lined with mink. 

An homage to Birkenstocks, these furry ones were then aptly called by fashion fanatics as Furkenstocks.

2013

• Vogue posted on its Web site a praise story about the no-heels titled “Pretty Ugly: Why Vogue Girls Have Fallen for Birkenstock.” 

2014

• "Nearly twenty million pairs of Birkenstocks were sold."

And that's the Die Renaissance des Birkenstock as the foot-healthy, somehow-fashionable classic.