Sole survivors

How anti-fashion strategy made Birkenstocks a hit

- Esther Addley

A shoemaking workshop at the Birkenstock factory in Bernstadt, Germany, where '50 hands make each pair', as the company continues to increase sales year after year

(DANIEL WOELLER)

When two brothers called Johannes and Johann Adam Birkenstock began making shoes in a tiny hamlet near Frankfurt in the 1770s, they could never have imagined what they were starting.

History doesn't record much about the first shoemaking Birkenstocks, who can be traced to a document written in 1774, the year after the Boston Tea Party. But 251 years, eight unbroken generations and many Johanns, Johanneses, Carls and Karls later, the company that emerged from that first family business has become one of the most rampagingly successful footwear brands on the planet.

Birkenstock now sells tens of millions of pairs of shoes every year (they won't say how many), giving the company a valuation of $7.5bn (£5.6bn) when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2023. It has been a fashion and high street success story for decades, yet still seems to boast gravity-defying growth year after year - only this week it announced projected growth of 17.5% on last year.