Crocs a Crock? A Mild Rant

Joining millions of other fans around the world, I own two pairs of Crocs and my children each own Crocs as well. For those of you living in a cave, Crocs are essentially rubber/plastic beach footwear available in a wide variety of fiesta-inspired colors. They are anti-microbial, open and airy, easily cared for, and started out with one style a few years ago. They now come in dozens of styles and colors for multiple purposes and also sport "jibbitz" - little iconographic stubs that you can insert into the holes in the tops of Crocs to personalize yours (I keep calling them "giblets").


I usually don't like trendy things for the reason alone that they are trendy, yet I do admire functional items at a reasonable price. Consequently I am a big fan of Crocs, but my respect came down a notch yesterday. A company-owned Crocs store opened in my neighborhood and we went to check it out. Very trendy location, trendy store design, trendy music playing - all of which I can forgive them for. Of course the bins with the jibbitz were swarmed by children like bees to a hive. What I found absolutely annoying was that not a single item in the store had a price on it.


We had come for one specific item for which we happened to know the price, but the lack of pricing on other items dissuaded our efforts to shop for additional purchases. When we asked the fellow at the register why nothing was priced, he said it was intended to have customers initiate a dialog with store employees by asking how much things were.


Who's brilliant marketing strategy was this? I can understand if you have lots of staff roaming the store to answer such questions. Instead, however, there were only the people at the registers who were constantly being interrupted by customers asking about pricing. Not only was this counter-productive in terms of "establishing a dialog," but it took 2-3 times as long to pay for our purchase as the guy who was checking us out always had to think about his respnse to price inquiries, and we felt like he was guessing half the time. "How much are these strapless pump Crocs?" "Uhhh, fifty-five, ninety-five?"


What is even more interesting, is that when Crocs are sold in other retail stores, the MSRP is pre-printed on the Crocs-affixed tags. This means that the company actually had to make up special tags just for the company stores that omit the price.


Guys. Stick with the original image of beach-bums around the world adorning their feet with your product. I don't mind if you expand the original line either, and whoever thought up jibbitz should get a prize. But don't get so full of yourself in the retail environment.