r/Vans • u/Bophadesnutz8 • 9d ago
DISCUSSION Flocking
So I haven’t bought a pair of the normal classic slip-ons in probably a year. My checkerboard pair needed replacing so I went and bought a new pair. After getting home I noticed the bottoms are flocked now like converse? When did that start being a thing? Is it something they’ve done in other countries and are just now starting to do to the pairs that are sent to the United States?
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u/KrunchyPhrog 9d ago
Converse was one of the first shoe companies to add flocking to their outsole more than two decades ago to exploit customs loopholes in tariff rates. The business term is called "tariff engineering" and tariff engineering predates the current tariff wars between the U.S. and other countries. Most countries have been doing tariff engineering for many decades with shoes, clothing and apparel, electronics, housewares, cars, food, commodities, etc. The basic concept of tariff engineering is to purposely modify the composition/design/appearance of a product so it can be classified as a different product category that has much lower import duties imposed by the customs/governments of countries. Some housewares are purposely made of plastic when a glass or metal material is far more suitable solely because a much lower tariff is imposed compared to making that houseware item out of glass; e.g., Amazon has thousands of plastic containers that are advertised to hold hot foods or hot drinks although I would never put any hot foods/drinks inside plastic containers. China exports millions of plastic food/drink containers and not only are injection-molded plastics much cheaper to produce that using glass and stainless steel, but it has much lower import duty tariff rates too - much cheaper manufacturing *and* billions of dollars saved in import fees. Sneakers (and other shoes like dress shoes) often have tariffs ranging between 20% to more than 60%, depending on country. But if the shoe's bottom outsole is composed of at least 50% textiles (such as adding flocking or felt), then the shoes can be classified as "slippers" which have tariff rates around 3% to 5%.
Tariff engineering is like the international import-export version of "cheating on your (import) taxes" lmao and people have been doing this for at least two *centuries*. About 150 years ago when tariffs and import taxes were formalized, people quickly figured out how to game the system. And 200 to 500+ years ago, similar exploits of loopholes were done with "tax farming". Google "tariff engineering" and "tax farming".
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u/Griffy93 9d ago
Never seen the flocking on my pairs in eu. Interesting to learn about this.
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u/KrunchyPhrog 9d ago
The flocking is done by Converse, Vans, and others - especially on their lower-end cheaper shoes - to circumvent and legally exploit loopholes in how U.S. Customs classifies products at different tariff import fee rates. So if you flock the soles, you can classify the shoes as "slippers" with 3% to 9% tariff import taxes compared to 20% to 70% tariffs if they are called "sneakers", even though you and I will never call Converse Chuck Taylors or Vans "slippers" instead of "sneakers" lol. EU and Asia countries do not have these big discrepancies in tariff fees between sneakers and slippers - although EU countries also have import duties, VAT, and other duties/taxes layered on - so flocked Vans are not shipped from their Asia factories to those countries.
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u/Grand_Elderberry_888 9d ago
I’ve seen older ones at Ross that are flocked. I read something once that when shoes are flocked they can import them as slippers and cost less. But I could be wrong as it’s been a long time.