Justin Bieber recently collaborated with Crocs to design a limited-edition pair of shoes, which finally went on sale just three days ago.
Crocs celebrity collabs have been one of the biggest trends of 2020, and each of them – including Bieber’s – sold out within mere hours after their release. Bieber’s were no different, and some people claimed they were labeled “sold out” within just 10 minutes of their launch.
Croc’s series of celebrity collaborations actually started through a 2017 partnership with designer Christopher Kane, but only really reached viral status with their Post Malone collaboration in 2018. However, until 2020, the brand stuck mostly to collaborations with other clothing brands – they only began to collaborate with food companies and even more celebrities this year, which finally pushed the well-known clog brand from infamy back to popularity. In 2020 alone, they’ve collaborated with Peeps (as in the colorful little marshmallow animals), KFC, Ruby Rose, Luke Combs, Vera Bradley, Bad Bunny and more.
Each collaboration was meant to emulate the artists’ image using well-known Crocs’ shoe designs and Jibbitz, the charms at the shoes’ tops. Many Croc collabs also had accessories such as chains, spikes, and variant straps. Bieber’s Crocs were meant to emulate his own sunny disposition, using a simple yellow shoe and whimsical cartoony Jibbitz.
Since his Crocs did not have any additional accessories, what made the Bieber shoes stand out was that they were Crocs’ first three way collaboration – the company worked not only with Bieber himself, but also his clothing company Drew, the logo of which appears on one of the shoe’s several Jibbitz.
The three-way collaboration meant there were two ways to purchase the pair of shoes, both on the Crocs and the Drew website, which may have contributed to the technical difficulties with the launch. Many Twitter users took to the site on the day of the release to post about how they got kicked out of the virtual line and excluded from the event, and then about the event restarting entirely.
For some fans, the event relaunch provided an extra stroke of luck, allowing them to purchase the shoe and excitedly post about them on Twitter.
However, just like all the other Crocs collaboration launches, plenty of fans were left disappointed, making memes about how they couldn’t get the shoe after waiting for hours in line.
