Hey Dudes
[In cartoonish Italian accent] HEEEEY DUUUUDE
Welcome to Neverrong. Read along here for any and all juicy tidbits and links you may have missed along the way. Listen to the FULL EPISODE HERE.
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard of Hey Dudes, but when we recorded this episode a few months ago, David and Reed had only recently learned of them. You can hear them discover what Hey Dudes are in real time in our ON episode.
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But even Albert, who’d known of Hey Dudes, was shocked to read that these disgusting kleenex boxes were ranked by the Heat Index as the most popular shoe in America.
David leads us all through the history of Hey Dudes and how this default-in-the-Sims-lookin’ shits became so popular (and why?).
History
Hey Dude, was founded in Florence, Italy in 2008 by Allesandro Rosano and Dario Kaute. Somehow this makes the name make more sense. It feels not entirely unlike the Italian guy who sang “American” pop songs in absolute gibberish.
The company’s goal was to create shoes that looked like contemporary, modern shoes (unclear if this worked) and had the comfort of slippers at the same time (also unclear). Weird hybrid of Wallabees, Espadrilles, and Crocs.
The shoes hit the market in 2009 to tepid sales in Europe, but they expanded into the U.S. a year later to more tepid sales. They had very nearly given up until a brand called The Buckle made a huge order in 2014 and kept the dream (nightmare) alive. Zappo’s kicked things up a notch, selling a million pairs in 2017 and it all snow-balled from there. 95% of their business is in the states.
Crocs bought Hey Dudes in 2021 for $2.5 billion. Crocs share prices immediately fell after this sale, but things ended up working out for the Crocs moguls, because everyone is making an insane amount of money and selling a crazy amount of shoes.
Modern Day
Hey Dude tops the list of casual footwear across all generations according to the Heat Index survey.
Even though all your hosts are well within the target demographic of humans with appendages, none of us own the BEST-SELLING SHOE IN AMERICA.
Albert and David did their due diligence. They went to a Famous Footwear (that has since gone out of business) to sample their wares. David immediately pointed out that the tongue of the shoes is an unfinished edge - manufactured to be as cheap as humanly possible. They feel like slippers you can buy at CVS, a place you probably wouldn’t willingly buy slippers normally, but hey…
They offer a whole range of fabrics and colors, most of which look like a pit-stain. They unfortunately lack much structure and support. Though there are sneakers in the same price range that would certainly hold up far better, these Hey Dudes could possibly be mistaken for a “nicer” shoe at 50 yards.
We struggle to determine who exactly Hey Dudes are for. David has seen them on the feet of fast food workers in POV youtube videos. Reed thinks they could be on the feet of oil-rich billionaires at the country club. Albert thinks they’re mostly for people at rest - maybe people who’ve been working hard and want to rest their “hot dogs.”
Ratings
David: 4.5/10
“I would never wear a pair and I would not want to be seen in a pair, but they do give an option to people who would rather not choose. It’s become default footwear. If you told Chatgpt to come up with ‘shoes,’ that would be these. They’re light on resource usage, but they’re all synthetic, not a fan of that. I have to give them credit for infesting every aspect of American males’ closets without us knowing it.”
Reed: 5
“I gotta go with a 5 also, I think it’s a cool way to whisper ‘I surrender.’”
Albert: 4
“I guess I gotta give it a 4. You have to give it props for how pervasive it is. It’s like a covid variant, it just swept across the whole country and struck similar communities and has become endemic now in our society. Of course I wouldn’t wear it and I don’t really approve of the look. And honestly when I tried them on, I thought I would have an experience like the first time I tried on Birkenstocks, but it’s giving nothing.”