I know it is hard to believe that some people are already thinking about Fall and Winter. It is especially hard for me to believe this when my air conditioner is cranking non-stop just to keep my house at a balmy 76 degrees. But, in the fashion world, folks are always thinking way ahead!

Last week, Crocs Inc. revealed what will be their line of shoes for the 2008 Fall and Winter season. Of course, this big announcement was made in New York City at the Fashion Footwear Association of New York (FFANY) trade show. Now, we obviously cannot visit the show since it ended on June 5th, but we can tell you about some of the Crocs styles that we can expect to see in the coming months.

In the coming cooler months, Crocs is expanding the Fuzz collection with cozy flats and boots. The six new styles in the Fuzz collection really embody the innovation of Crocs shoes by combining Crocs’ signature comfort along with soft synthetic fur linings. Crocs and fur… an interesting combination, to say the least! To me, this spells COMFORT!

Keep your eyes peeled for the Crocs Nanook and the Crocs Nadia. Both of these styles will be available in an array of colors and come in a wide range of Women’s and Girl’s sizes.

Additional models in the Crocs Fall 2008 lineup include:
• The Crocs Ambler, a fleece lined casual boot for the guys with a leather upper
• The Crocs Juneau, another for the ladies, with a new take on a classic flat with fun elastic detailing and chic feminine design

Get ready to start shopping for your new Fall and Winter Crocs beginning in September.

It is that time of year again. I am starting to see the holiday advertising and displays coming out in the stores. What are the must have holiday gifts this year?

Well here are technology gift ideas that might be helpful.

Digital Photo Frame
Digital Photo Frames are great for the parents and grandparents. Load up a digital camera memory card full of pictures of the kids, friends, and family and put it in one of these photo frames. I don’t know about you, but after taking photos with my digital camera, I rarely ever see them again. With still film cameras, you would print all your photos and put them in a photo album. Now with a digital picture frame you can save money on printing and still enjoy all your pictures.

$200 Computer
WalMart is offering a $200 computer (without monitor). The computer comes pre-installed with OpenOffice (Similar to Microsoft Office Suite), gOS (a version of Linux), DVD & CD-R drive, 512mb RAM, network card to browse the internet, and 80gb hard drive. This is not a bad setup for $200, but you do need to buy a monitor.

iPhone
Now that the price on these have come down a bit, an iPhone might just be at the top of what I MIGHT pay for a phone. I don’t like the fact you are required to use the AT&T service, but I have seen there are ways around this.

What are your “Must have gifts”?

For those who brave shopping the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday), be sure to checkout this site to map out your shopping prior to leaving the house.

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.

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!

Guy Kawaski, a popular blogger, admits he is a fan of Crocs Shoes (or at least someone in his family is a fan).

littlerubbershoes.com welcomes Guy to the Crocs Fan Club.

For those who are unfamiliar with Guy, you should read and bookmark his blog. Good Stuff!

Crocs have been banned from a Stockholm, Sweden Hospital. Apparently Crocs were suspected in generating static electricity which caused problems with some of the medical equipment. Thankfully nobody was hurt in incident. This problem with static electricity in the hospital has been going on for a number of years, but has increased in the recent months thought to be caused by the increase in the number of hospital workers wearing Crocs.

We reported earlier where a hospital in the US banned Beach and Cayman Crocs because the holes caused a health risk.

We just created a littlerubbershoes.com MySpace account and need friends! If you have a MySpace account let us know or Request to be a CrocFans Friend.

We are still working on our MySpace page, but you can find us at http://www.myspace.com/crocfans. Come by and say Hi!

Which color of Crocs would you choose?

One of these?



or something different?

We are excited to announce the launch of the Crocs Shoe Fans Forum. This forum is a place where you can discuss anything and everything with other people who have a common bond - Crocs!

I am also excited to announce that one lucky forum member will receive a brand new pair of Crocs in the color of their choice. All you need to do to be eligible to win is to sign up to the forum and post how you found out about Crocs and why you are a Crocs Fan.

More information on how to win a free pair of Crocs.

A special thank you goes out to our contest sponsor - Tilly’s.

If anyone would like to help moderate the new Crocs Shoe Fans Forum, please email us at crocs@littlerubbershoes.com. There will be benefits of being a forum moderator. (Think free Crocs products.)

UPDATE! - We have a winner of the Free Crocs Giveaway. Congrats goes out to doris4445. They won a Free pair of Crocs in the color of their choice thanks to one of our sponsor’s Tillys.com

Stay tuned for exciting contests and giveaways in the future from littlerubbershoes.com!

Technorati Tags: crocs, free, win, crox

The latest Crocs specifically for Kids and Infants are now available. The Crocling Crocs feature the similar Beach Crocs bottom with a soft neoprene upper that fits snug around the foot.

These are much better for staying on children’s small, active feet. Unlike other styles of Crocs, the Blue and Purple Croclings have a swirl coloring often found in imitation brand Crocs.

Crocling Crocs are now available in the following colors in Children and Infant Sizes.