Crocs Inc.’s initial public offering provides a lesson in how generosity toward friends, family and business colleagues can cause wealth to multiply.
“It is a very warm story. It is about friendship. It is almost a fairy tale,” said Robert Kammer Jr., a Boulder dentist and early investor in Crocs.
Kammer was in a circle of 10 friends of Crocs founder George Boedecker Jr. They backed him and co-founder Scott Seamans early, not knowing whether the unusual shoes they were proposing would amount to anything.
Boedecker and Seamans were generous in return with the shares they gave, shares that rewarded the company’s numerous supporters beyond their wildest imaginations Wednesday.
Existing shareholders in Crocs received $97 million Wednesday and gained a currency that valued their remaining interest in the company at $850 million.
Some of the windfall went to the company’s founders, its executive team and outside investors with deep pockets – not unusual in a successful IPO.
But Crocs’ IPO also showered riches on ordinary people – an architect, a bodybuilder, a boat captain.
“You have to salute the genius and generosity of George Boedecker and Scott Seamans,” Kammer said. “The rest of us are business guys. We stood in the background.”
The two could be much richer today if they hadn’t been so generous, he added.
Boedecker brought Lyndon “Duke” Hanson, a high school friend, into the company as another founder. That connection is how Vic Hanson, Lyndon’s father and a retired architect, got the chance to invest.
“When it was first being started, we were chuckling that these shoes were rather ugly,” Vic Hanson said.
But he wanted to back his son, who was working long hours.
“It was not a whole lot of money,” Vic Hanson said.
He made $137,000 Wednesday, and his remaining shares are worth $777,000, one of the smaller payouts.
“It should give me an opportunity to help some people I wouldn’t help (otherwise),” he said. “The Mount St. Vincent School for Kids is one of my favorites. They will see something.”
There are other interesting stories, like that of boat captain Ron Oliver, whom Seamans knew. Crocs hired him to run a distribution center in Miami early on, rewarding his sweat equity with shares.
Oliver, who is no longer with the company, netted $1.84 million in the offering and continues to hold shares worth $9.6 million.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-820-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
