Authentic

Thank you to Vertel Publishing for gifting me a review copy of Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans by Paul Van Doren.

I find memoirs so fascinating, and Paul Van Doren has lived quite the life, both in the business world and outside of it—although I think he would argue that the two can’t be separated. This book isn’t just a story of how Vans shoes came to be, but rather it is a mix of business and entrepreneurial advice, life lessons, and personal stories.

The author talks about how his success has nothing to do with shoes, but everything to do with his ability to identify and solve problems. I think that’s something that can be said of most successful people in the business world, but I think he really summed it up well in this book.

One of my favorite pieces of advice, and something I think more of us could take to heart, was “…find honorable people to be your partners, work with creative people and be fair. Be kind. Give a shit about how you treat people and be aware of how your actions might disturb or distress them. In other words, don’t be a jerk. Stand up for others. Until our last breath, we can do something good for someone else.”

Throughout the book, you really get a sense of just how invested the author was in making the best possible product, and how fascinated he was by the science as well as the art of creating Vans.

Word of warning, there are a lot of horse-racing metaphors, which didn’t really speak to me, but I did still find so many interesting tidbits throughout the book. Also, the vintage Vans ads in the middle of the book are completely amazing. If you’d like to check this one out, click the button below.

Synopsis:

You may not know their creator, but you certainly know the shoes: for more than a generation, Vans shoes have been synonymous with cool.

Now in this refreshingly candid memoir, meet Paul Van Doren, the charismatic founder of Vans—the shoe company beloved by skateboarders, creatives, and fans everywhere for its laid-back, colorful SoCal vibe, and famous for its people-oriented company culture.

In Authentic, he shares his unlikely journey from high-school dropout to sneaker-industry legend. A blue-collar kid with no higher education and zero retail experience, Van Doren started out as a 16-year-old “service boy” at a local rubber factory. Over the next few decades, he leveraged a knack for numbers, a genius for efficiency, and the know-how to make a great canvas tennis shoe into an all-American success story. What began as a family shoe business has today evolved into a globally recognized brand with billions of dollars of annual revenue.

Van Doren is not just an entrepreneur, he’s an innovator. In 1966, when the first House of Vans store opened, there were no stand-alone retail stores just for sneakers. Paul’s bold experiments in product design, distribution, and marketing (Why not sell custom shoes? Single shoes?), aided by legions of fans—skateboarders, surfers, even Sean Penn wearing Vans’ famous checkerboard slip-on shoe in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High—made Vans a household name. But there was also back-breaking work, a shocking bankruptcy, family turmoil, and a profound shift in how customers think about athletic shoes.

Authentic details Van Doren’s personal life, but also hard-won business lessons learned over six turbulent decades in the shoe trade: the importance of deep-rooted values, of improvisation, of vision (and revision), and above all, of valuing people over profits.

Bracingly forthright and totally entertaining, Authentic is a business memoir by an American original.