The former makes tea. Really good tea. The latter? They make those ubiquitous rubber shoes with the holes punched in ‘em, and a whole lot more.

As far as I know, Celestial Seasonings has zero presence in the social media world, but Crocs has George. George Smith, Jr., the head of its social media work (actually, I don’t know his exact title).

A while ago George asked me if I was interested in receiving any of the new shoe lines that Crocs had introduced in the last few months and I said "yes". He sent them, shoes for my children as well as myself, I thanked him, and I also added the following postscript:

Now, tell me, George, what can I do for you/Crocs as a thank you for your generous gift of shoes to my family?

His response is one that modern public relations professionals should study and seek to emulate:

As far as doing something for me/Crocs – that’s up to you. I didn’t give you the shoes expecting anything in return. But if you feel there is a way that you can still be Dave Taylor and do something with us, let me know and we can work it out. Our objectives, for the most part, are really about showing everyone that we’re not just that one shoe anymore. It’s starting to tip toward that – so it’s a good thing. Any way you feel you can help that is awesome! And if you need anything more from me to do that, just ask. But – don’t feel obligated to do anything.

He continued with an interesting observation about a charity effort that the company is developing:

We do have our SolesUnited campaign that is about donating shoes to people in need domestically and worldwide. Still developing our rebranding of that – but if that’s something you’re interested in working on as well – that could work too.


Finally, a postscript of his own:

And seriously – don’t worry about anything. I’d rather have you feel inspired with a great idea than me offering up the boring things I think of. And if you never get that inspiration – so be it, at least you have shoes.

I have to again compliment George and Crocs on this response. It’s straightforward, candid, and professional.

To be frank, there is a nuanced and implied contract between companies that offer up products for review and the independent reviewers, one that can easily subtly bias the reviewer to be more positive about the product than they would if they’d spent their own money on it. I’ve written about it before, actually. See: Pay me to blog about your products, for example, so I won’t readdress the point here.

I will simply say nice job.

Comments

Then again, I also hadn’t noticed the rise of Uggs and Crocs, either; the thigh-high black boots traversing Japan’s rail system I found a dozen levels more interesting, but for entirely separate reasons.

I was (and am), however, a big Skecher fan, and a pair of white Sketcher tennis shoes carried me the entire miserable, breathless, cold trek to the top of Mount Fuji, where, if you like capitalist monks, taking short naps in public mountain bathroom floors, weird mountain-top post offices, $5 thimbles full of hot tea, and expanses of jagged, black, ugly rock, it’s worth it.

In Kentucky, mountains have trees and grass and neat geological visuals, and they go up nice and gradual like, so I think I’ll keep’em. Four years later, I still have those Skechers, and they still have Fuji-dust on them.

So it’s interesting that Skechers made a public bid for Heely’s yesterday, offering them just shy of $143 million. The corporate leadership pulled a Microsoft move, making first a private offer in May, which didn’t garner "a positive response" from Heelys.

It could be that Heelys wasn’t impressed by an offer right at half the company’s 52-week high. The offer was, at least, a buck fifty higher than the year’s lowest price, and shows Skechers has some confidence in a company with a profit loss of 103 percent in the second quarter. That same quarter brought back $18.2 million in sales, more than a few hairs shy of the $74 million in the second quarter of 2007.

One can’t blame the economy for everything; it’s entirely likely Heelys is on the outs in terms of popularity. That also makes them a presumably cheaper acquisition target, so long as they aren’t too proud about things. (Heelys, just to sprinkle salt on a wound, isn’t Yahoo.) One presumes Skechers has a contingency/revival plan in place, perhaps mirroring or besting Heelys’ own diversification ambitions.

Bill Tancer at Hitwise seems also a bit nonplussed at Heelys’ self-confidence, noticing first the lack of local mallrats bumping into more commerce-minded and old-school pedestrians. Not willing to call "fad" just yet, he turned to search data to see if Heelys-related search volume charted similarly to its stock price.

The answer to that is yes, nearly a mirror image.

He writes in conclusion, "it strikes me that companies in the process of acquiring retail brands might want to consider the power of search term volume as a proxy for a retail brand’s equity. Also of note, while its [sic] not always the case, here stock price and weekly search term volume appear to correlate very nicely."

This seems like a nice angle to promote the necessity of his metrics firm, but it is also an interesting idea. More data might be needed though. Crocs’ decline on the stock market over the past year is far steeper than Heelys’, plummeting from a peak of around $75 to its current price of $4.69.

While that’s a pretty nasty tumble, the search interest in Crocs outpaces both Heelys and Uggs by a fair amount, according to Google Trends. Uggs’ search volume resembles Mt. Fuji itself when in graph form, falling to match the same non-interest in Heelys. Crocs, though showing some decline, has remained steady over the past year, and has shown recently a slight revival of interest.

Would this mean that Crocs are a better acquisition target for Skechers than Heelys? One can only speculate.

In case searchers keying in "crocs" might be looking for crocodiles instead, Compete.com’s comparison of traffic to each shoemaker’s website mirrors the Google Trends return, only with Uggs making a slight comeback to the tune of 92 percent growth in the past month. Crocs.com is a steady climber, mostly level but up 0.5 percent. Heelys’ line is flat and low like the Mississippi River flood plains, except for that nasty 66% drop in traffic over the year.

With these extra stats—these interest indicators—in mind, it does make you wonder what Skechers is thinking making a bid for Heelys. More so, though, it makes you wonder what Heelys was thinking when they turned them down.