Birkenstock IPO stumbles out of the gate
Shares in Birkenstock began trading on Wall Street for the first time today — though they dropped below their IPO price of $46 per share. The footwear company is the latest to test the waters for public offerings — following chip designer Arm and delivery app Instacart last month — after the IPO market kind of went into deep freeze at the end of last year.
Birkenstock is not the usual shiny, new startup unicorn we’ve seen in IPO eras past. In fact for decades, Birkenstock has been selling the same — lets call them… sensible… shoes. And the company has been in operation for nearly 250 years. So why is it going public now?
They may not be the sexiest shoes in the world, but Birks, and their signature orthopedic footbed, inspire a loyal following, which includes health policy worker Emma Adelson in Chicago.
“They have a really big community surrounding them,” she said.
And Adelson wanted to be part of that community, which has expanded from the stereotype of the crunchy granola crowd, to a wider audience who see them as a design classic.
Adelson saved up a hundred bucks and change to buy her first pair during her senior year of college seven years ago, and they’re still going strong.
“They’re not making them to break down in a couple years,” she said. “And they’re just really versatile. I feel like you can still pair them with a pair of jeans or a skirt or dress or whatever you’re wearing. They look good.
Not fashionable exactly, but good.
“‘Cool things’ are not necessarily beautiful in a classical definition of the term,” said Thomai Serdari, a marketing professor at NYU who often sports a pair of gold Birkenstock two-strap Arizona sandals. “It’s a brand with legacy and continuity. They have a heritage.”
The family-owned company has been making the same styles in the same factory in Germany for decades. But she said it’s also kept innovating. It’s taken investment from an arm of luxury brand LVMH and launched limited collaborations with fashion designers and, of course, the hottest movie of the summer: “Barbie.”
And a brand that represents that more down to earth “truth about the universe” could be attractive to investors too, said analyst Zachary Warring at CFRA.
The IPO market has seen its ups and downs over the last couple years. Glittering high growth unicorns are no longer the only game in town.
“You’re looking at more companies that are established that are growing but they’re growing profitably,” he said.
Nothing frumpy about that.
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