On July 19, 2007, Crocs, Inc. sent a cease and desist letter to our web hosting company which demanded that that they immediately provide the contact information for the registrant of CrocFans.com (me) or immediately transfer the registration of CrocFans.com to Crocs, Inc. If these demands were not agreed to by July 26, 2007, Crocs, Inc. may “pursue all available remedies” including “injunctive relief”.

This letter caused our hosting company BlueHost.com to temporarily suspend our account without any notice to us on July 25th. After speaking with BlueHost.com I was able to get the site back up and live after about 15 hours of being down. At that time I learned of the letter sent to BlueHost.com regarding the CrocFans.com domain and Crocs “demanding” of the ownership transfer of the domain.

I thought why would Crocs, Inc. have a problem with a fan site devoted to their products, brand, and the people who love their products? My initial thought was that this has to be some sort of mistake. After reading the cease and desist letter I noticed that the letter stated that CrocFans.com was being used to “operate a website to sell shoes that are very similar to those sold by Crocs, Inc.”

Well, as many of you know, we have never sold any products on CrocFans.com so I thought that I would pro-actively contact the Crocs, Inc. attorney who sent the letter to my hosting company to clarify this fact.

After leaving a voice mail with the attorney and an initial email helping clarify what the site was and that it did not sell competing products to Crocs the attorney acknowledged that CrocFans.com does not sell Crocs products or products similar to those sold by Crocs.

BUT… went on to say that the use of the Crocs trademark in the domain (CrocFans.com) “could be confusing to consumers as to whether the site is sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Crocs, Inc.” Although they did not demand that we discontinue the content of CrocFans.com and that I was free to continue running the website under a different domain name, they still demanded that I transfer the domain name CrocFans.com over to Crocs, Inc.

Being a diplomatic person, I thought I would show my good faith with the Crocs organization and offered to transfer the domain CrocFans.com over to Crocs, Inc. after what I felt was enough time to do the necessary work to transfer a well established website domain to a brand new domain. After spending 2 years in growing the CrocFans.com website into what it is today with the tens of thousands of visitors to the site every month I offered to transfer the domain by January 1, 2008.

Anyone who has had to move an established website over to a different domain knows this is not something that you can do overnight without loosing all of your traffic. There are many steps necessary to ensure all of the work and effort already put into the site can be saved and transferred over to the new domain. I felt 5 months was the least amount of time it would take to do this transfer given the 2 years it took to build the site.

After sending my offer via email to the Crocs attorney, I felt certain Crocs, Inc. would be understanding and accepting of my offer. CrocFans.com has been one of (if not the biggest) online supporter of their shoes and brand for the last 2 years. We’ve held Crocs contests for people to show their love for Crocs (I paid for the winner’s prize with my own money) and been interviewed supporting Crocs in a New York Times article. I thought this was a fair compromise.

I guess was wrong…

The Crocs, Inc. attorney informed me that Crocs, Inc. was willing to give me 30 days (until September 5, 2007) to complete the transfer of ownership of CrocFans.com to Crocs, Inc.

I have responded by respectfully declining their offer to transfer CrocFans.com over to Crocs, Inc. by September 5, 2007.

Needless to say the whole situation has left a bad taste in my mouth especially since I have spent a significant amount of time creating a site that supports, promotes, and helps further the Crocs brand to a worldly audience. Although I still like the shoes, I am not as impressed with the company and their management of this situation.

So, where does that leave us today?

I have started moving the website over to the new domain LittleRubberShoes.com. You may have noticed this at the top. Before I get a bunch of emails stating that Crocs are not made of rubber, I know, but that was the best I could come up with. If you have better ideas for the new domain please add them in the comments below.

I am working toward fully transferring the site from CrocFans.com to LittleRubberShoes.com by January 1, 2008. It is my hope to have the same amount of traffic to the site by the first of the year as what we were seeing before we made this change.

Undoubtedly, our traffic will take a short-term dip because of this move, but over time we should be back to where we were before. I’ve already seen a dip today where we previously were on the first page of search results on Google for “Crocs”, now I don’t see the site in the first 3 pages.

We need your help. Please update your bookmarks, link to our new site, subscribe to our newsletter, subscribe to our RSS feed and tell your fellow CrocFans where we’ve moved.

We will be announcing a new contest shortly that will hopefully build some excitement around the new domain LittleRubberShoes.com. Stay tuned for more details on this, but expect to see a much bigger and better prize than just one free pair of Crocs like previous contest.

In closing, of this marathon post… it is my hope that companies will start learning how to leverage brand evangelists to their advantage. The companies that can harness the power of brand evangelists will not only build their brand but build it without additional marketing cost.

I read an article today that up until last year Zappos.com had 5 people in their marketing department. They are expecting to do a billion dollars in sales next year. They have focused on providing the best customer satisfaction and letting their customers do their marketing for them. Zappos gets brand evangelism.

The cheapest way to get a new customer is not by you talking about your products (traditional marketing). It is by finding ways to get other people talking about your products.

Brand evangelists have been around for a long time. Traditionally, they could only reach one person at a time. The internet gives your brand evangelists much more power and in some cases the ability to reach thousand if not millions of people. Companies need to work with these people who are your brand evangelists; they are your most valuable marketing resource.

I wonder if our friends over at IHateCrocs.com have received a letter?

Please post your comments below.

crocs

Last week I was watching Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea, and he had on the founder of another shoe company called TOMS Shoes. Has anyone heard of this company? I hadn’t, but after hearing the story of how it was started and their cause to give a pair shoes to needy kid around the world with every purchase of their shoes I was inspired.

I went to the internet to find out more about TOMS Shoes and found a number of press mentions and YouTube videos that they put out. One of these videos was of what they call TOMS Shoe Drops where they went to Argentina in 2006 and put 10,000 shoes on kids feet who otherwise may not have had any.

I was so inspired by their founder Blake Mycoskie and what he is doing with TOMS Shoes I decided to start another fan blog site. TOMS Shoe Fans is similar to littlerubbershoes.com in that we will post various information about the shoes, company, and the people that love TOMS Shoes.

There is no way of knowing if TOMS will generate as big of following as Crocs, but if this is any indication I think they are well on their way.

Check out the Womens TOMS, Mens TOMS, and Kids or Tiny Toms and let us know what you think by submitting a comment.

If you have never heard of TOMS Shoes I challenge you to checkout the site and read the various blog posts and watch the related videos to get a better understanding of this company. I would also love to hear what Croc Fans think of the shoes and if you would consider buying a pair.

We are able to offer you a special discount from our friends at ShoeBuy.com. Click the link below to redeem a personalized $10 off coupon code on your next $50 or more purchase at ShoeBuy.com.

Now you can go buy some more Crocs!

Redeem your $10 off coupon now!

If we get 3 people to use this special offer, we will get a $75 gift certificate sent to us. GOOD NEWS for our Croc Fans! We have enough Crocs, so will then give this $75 gift certificate to one lucky Croc Fan through a soon to be announce contest. Stay tuned for more detail - that is if we get 3 of you to use this offer to save $10 on your next purchase.

littlerubbershoes.com was recently mentioned in a NY Times Magazine article on what makes Crocs so popular. After reading the full article it seems to me the writer feels the popularity of Crocs by us Croc Fans is to spite the Anti-Croc movement. I respectfully disagree.

There might be some of that now that they have become so popular in our society, but the Anti-Croc’ers of the world didn’t know about Crocs until the passion and love for these shoes had already hit critical mass. It is not a situation of which came first the chicken or the egg. Fans of Crocs came about because of comfort, the ability to express themselves through colorful shoes, and not caring what other people think about what you are wearing because Crocs made them happy.

The Anti-Crocs “movement”, using this term loosely since we are just talking about shoes, only came about because of the rapid growth and popularity of Crocs. If you look at anything popular, you are going to have people who will to try to knock it down. I think the love for Crocs may be fueled by the Crocs Haters to a certain degree but I don’t think the love for Crocs from fans around the world would be lessened any if there weren’t Anti-Crocs people saying how ugly they are.

What is great about this country and other the free countries around the world is that everyone can have an opinion about anything, but at the end of the day, we are just talking about shoes. I have actually enjoyed watching the destruction of Crocs videos that have been made because I find them humorous and creative. We even posted them on this blog.

I think the article was an interesting read, I just got the feeling the premise of the piece was that Croc Fans were born out of people hating them because they felt they were ugly. I actually think it is very much the other way around.

I take more of the approach, if you like the shoes, wear them and not worry about what other people think of you. And after hearing from the many Croc Fans from around the world, seeing the number of “I Love My Crocs” widgets posted on mySpaces and blogs, and the number of people motivated to post their Crocs Pictures and Videos on the web, I think that is what most Croc Fans will continue to do.

Let us hear from you by submitting a comment. Tell us what you thought about the article and why you think there are such polarizing views on Crocs?

I was contacted by Dave, a graduate student at West Virginia University, asking if we could help him with his creative strategies course. Dave is a fellow Crocs Fan and is doing a project where he is looking for some information (anonymous) on what type of people wear Crocs and what it is about them that they like.

So Croc Fans, let’s help Dave out and take this quick < 5 minute survey and help him with his project. He has promised to share the information with us when he is done, so it will be interesting to see what type of responses you all give.

When you are done with the survey, add a comment to this post and give Dave some feedback on the survey.

UPDATE: The survey is now closed.

It seems the survey only supported 100 users and is not complete. Thank you all for helping Dave out with this project. I’ve been told he will share the data with us when he has it compiled. Stay Tuned!

We have selected a winner for our “I Love My Crocs” Contest. Congrats to our winner.

Our winner loves her Sea Foam Crocs, Fuchsia Crocs, and Lavender Crocs.

Stay tuned for more exciting contests and prizes.

Hat Tip to vidurnaik

Here is a video of a hockey player warming up before a game sporting his Crocs.

We receive pictures from fellow Croc Fans all the time, and here are some of our latest.

Here is Chris wrestling a Croc on his 25th birthday wearing his Crete Crocs at Gatorland in Florida. Great action shot Chris!

Andrea and her son sporting their Sage Crocs.

Allison and her niece showing their matching Yellow Crocs with Jibbitz.

We love hearing from you and seeing your pictures of you in your Crocs. Send us your most creative Crocs pictures and we will post them for the world to enjoy. Send your photos to Crocs@littlerubbershoes.com.

We decided to take all our Crocs and put them in the pool to share with the world. We hope you like. I guess we have quite a few Crocs. What do you think?

crocs pictures