German Immigrant with No Shoe Knowledge Sparks US Birkenstock Mania: Discovering the Cure to Chronic Foot Pain and Initiating Sales at Hippy Health Food Stores

A German-American woman unknowingly started the Birkenstock sandal mania that spread from Germany to the rest of the world, including Barbie Land.

Margot Fraser, who died in 2017 at the age of 88, transformed the Birkenstock brand from a German medical solution to a global fashion trend.

Suffering from chronic foot pain, Fraser picked up a pair of Birkenstock’s Madrid sandals to ease the discomfort when she traveled to her home country of Germany in 1966.

‘Her toes stood up. Her back felt better. She was so impressed that she contacted Karl Birkenstock to investigate the importation of his family’s “strange-looking sandals” into the US. Birkenstock said.

Nearly 60 years later, Birkenstock announced this week that it was floating on the New York Stock Exchange with an estimated value of $9.2 billion (£7.6 billion).

A pair of Birkenstocks appeared not once, but twice in this year’s blockbuster, Barbie. Sales of Birkenstocks are said to have increased by 300 percent as a result

Suffering from chronic foot pain, Fraser picked up a pair of Birkenstock’s Madrid sandals to ease the discomfort when she traveled to her home country of Germany in 1966.

After failing to impress American shoe store owners with what many have dubbed the “ugly” sandals, a friend of Margot’s suggested she set up a booth for the sandals at a health food conference in San Francisco. She did, and Fraser said the store managers who rejected her idea soon begged her for a pair.

Fraser, a seamstress, was born in 1929 and grew up in Berlin, but moved to Northern California in the early 1960s and married an American.

She wrote in her 2009 book Dealing with the Tough Stuff: “All women’s shoes were narrow and had pointed toes. Even the so-called healthy shoes still had heels. Since millions of women in the United States had sore feet, I thought it would be easy to put this beautiful footwear on them.”

The original Birkenstock style, the Madrid, had a molded cork footbed and a crossed buckle over the toes. The purpose of the shoe was to force the owner to grip the toe strap to prevent the shoe from falling off, thus strengthening his calf muscle. Germans called this phenomenon ‘Anxiety Reflex’, which means ‘fear reflex’.

Fraser said The New Yorker that after she went to stock up on Birkenstocks at the San Fran health food store (next to the granola) the shopkeepers would say to her, ‘Look, there’s a health food store on my street, and people are walking out with shoe boxes. They should walk out of my store with shoe boxes.”

She was so impressed with the results that her foot started to hurt when wearing the sandals that she personally contacted Karl Birkenstock to suggest he import his magic shoes.

Fraser said that after she went to stock up on Birkenstocks at the San Fran health food store (next to the granola), the shopkeepers said to her, “Look, there’s a health food store on my street, and people are walking out with shoe boxes. They should walk out of my store with shoe boxes.”

In the 1970s, Birkenstock released another style of sandal, the Arizona, which is today the brand’s most popular style. But even the new model was still considered just a hippie shoe for decades.

Over the years, Birkenstocks have consistently appeared in the fashion industry and popular culture.

Birkenstock’s most popular style has long been the double-buckle Arizona, but the recent popularity of the Boston clog has given the classic sandal a run for its money. A standard pair of Arizonas sells for $110, and a pair of Bostons costs $158.

Kate Moss wore a pair of Birkenstocks during one of her first photo shoots when she was 16 years old and made the ‘ugly’ ‘hippie’ shoes cool.

In 2019, almost 24 million pairs were sold in more than 100 countries. This week, Birkenstock – majority-owned by an American finance company backed by French luxury house LVMH – announced it would float on the New York Stock Exchange with an estimated value of $9.2 billion.

In 2022, Steve Jobs’ old, worn-out Birkenstocks, which were a key part of his iconic ‘uniform’, were expected to be auctioned for up to $80,000, but ultimately sold for $200,000.

A pair of Birkenstocks appeared not once, but twice in this year’s blockbuster, Barbie. Sales of Birkenstocks are said to have increased by 300 percent as a result.

After failing to impress shoe store owners with what many have dubbed the “ugly” sandals, a friend of Margot’s suggested she set up a booth for the sandals at a health food conference in San Francisco. She did, and Fraser said the store managers who rejected her idea soon begged her for a pair

In 2022, Steve Jobs’ old worn-out Birkenstocks, which were a key part of his iconic ‘uniform’, were expected to be auctioned for up to $80,000, but ultimately sold for $200,000.

After Fraser died in 2017, Birkenstock released a press release that attributed their success to the German-American seamstress.

‘Mrs. Fraser is responsible for bringing Birkenstock products to the U.S. and building the brand over its first 40 years on the market.”

The release stated that when Fraser put on the sandals “she immediately experienced comfort and relief from the oppressive, poorly made shoes common at the time.”

“She got the distribution rights and started building Birkenstock from her home in Northern California.

‘Mrs. Fraser was a modest pioneer. She was a female entrepreneur at a time when this was quite rare. Without any traditional retail or shoe experience, she built a multi-million dollar company that brought comfort to millions of people.

“She always did so with a warm smile, a deep belief in the product and a genuine appreciation for the people she worked with throughout the industry.”

Fraser was inducted into the Footwear News Hall of Fame in 1997 and into the National Shoe Retailers Association Hall of Fame in 2014.

Shares in Birkenstock began falling Wednesday afternoon, just hours after they began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock opened at $41, well below the $46 price at which they were offered to investors in the days before they began trading on the exchange.

Birkenstock is now listed under the ticker symbol ‘BIRK’. The stock’s opening price gave the company a market value of about $7.7 billion, well below its $8.6 billion valuation at last week’s IPO.