‘No longer that underdog’: How chief brand officer Terence Reilly is scaling Crocs and Heydude

Crocs’s brightly colored clogs are different from Stanley’s giant tumblers, as Reilly acknowledged to Modern Retail, but both brands have a sense of ubiquity. “You can’t go anywhere on Earth without seeing somebody wearing a pair of Crocs, and that’s an amazing gift,” he said in an interview.

That is, in many ways, Reilly’s doing. He occupied marketing roles at Crocs from 2013 until he left for Stanley, and during that time, helped increase Crocs’s “cool factor” via collaborations with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Post Malone. Now, Reilly is working to bring that same hype to the entire Crocs, Inc. family, which includes the casual footwear brand Heydude, of which Reilly was president from April 2024 to May 2025 until taking his new role. Reilly’s position now focuses on “oversight over the marketing and communications functions” of both Crocs and Heydude, according to a press release.

Reilly’s appointment comes at a tough time for the footwear industry, which is grappling with tumultuous tariffs and a larger pullback in discretionary spending. For its first quarter ending in March, Crocs, Inc. reported a 2.4% year-over-year increase in revenue for the Crocs brand, but a 9.8% year-over-year drop in revenue for the Heydude brand. Crocs, Inc. also withdrew its full-year outlook for 2025, citing “macroeconomic uncertainties stemming from global trade policies.”

At this time, “the consumer is more guarded with their dollar,” Reilly told Modern Retail. Still, Crocs, Inc. is betting on its durable, versatile and value-driven products to stand out, he said. That differentiation — paired with the company’s focus on TikTok Shop, celebrity partners like Sydney Sweeney and cultural relevance — should help it grow its “amazingly loyal consumers and community,” Reilly explained.

Reilly shared more in an interview, excerpted below. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When you were at Stanley, you helped the brand achieve huge levels of growth. How are you hoping to bring that same sense of excitement and virality to both Crocs and Heydude?

“They’re both wildly different brands [from] each other. Crocs has a multi-decade head start on Heydude, and it’s just part of the global footwear firmament. We like to say that Crocs is a shoe that you wear to meet royalty and the pizza delivery guy. That democratic nature of our brand is a gift that we’ve worked hard to achieve. And so we’re always looking to have, while not that same white-hot heat that the other brand you mentioned enjoyed, a long-term sustaining brand narrative for Crocs.

Crocs is no longer that underdog. It’s no longer the shoe that people used to make fun of. That was 10 years ago. A generation has grown up with Crocs. It’s a different time in Crocs’s trajectory now, and we are one of the biggest brands in the world. … We also have so many consumers that love Heydude. I hear stories about, ‘I have three, four, five pairs of Heydudes.’ So, both are separate [brands], but really incredible communities.”

You’ve spoken about wanting Heydude to resonate more with women. Where do those efforts stand today?

“We’ve increased our awareness of Heydude [among women] almost double in a year and a half. Our work with Sydney Sweeney, in particular, has helped generate a lot of eyeballs on the brand, and it’s been a wonderful success, in terms of an awareness perspective. What we’ve seen, however, is how men between ages 18 and 35 have a complete and total love for Heydude. … I was at the Houston rodeo back in the spring, and if guys weren’t wearing cowboy boots, they were wearing Heydudes. … So, we’re shifting a bit to focus on the core, loyal consumer who loves Heydude, which is typically an 18-to-35-year-old male. That’s where we’re going to be spending a lot of our time throughout this summer and probably into summer 2026.”

Where are most people finding your brands these days?

“We’re everywhere, from some of the world’s leading retailers to our own incredible fleet of stores and online. … We even have an exciting Crocs store opening up in Soho [in New York City] in just a couple of weeks. … But both brands have amazing traction and an early-mover advantage on Tiktok Shop. [What’s key to that] is just real engagement and exclusives. The first place you could get the Jelly Roll Heydudes was on TikTok Shop. We’re going to continue to press that advantage and do exciting things that people don’t expect with some of the incredible partnerships we have.”

How do you decide which celebrities to work with?

“For both brands, it’s really about authenticity. We’re looking for celebrities that are already fans of ours. There’s a love for our brand from wide swaths of individuals, cultures and communities, and celebrities fit into that.

Summer 2025 is [the debut of the final season of the Amazon Prime show] ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ and that’s why we’re working with [lead actress] Lola Tung right now. As we head into back to school, Lola is already out there, doing a wonderful job of connecting her audience and our audience together. Crocs is always ahead of the culture curve, if not creating the culture curve, and that is an incredible track record for our mighty little brand with 26 holes [in each pair]. Our phone is always ringing, and there are so many opportunities that cross our desks almost daily.

And Heydude, similarly. From Sydney Sweeney introducing [the brand campaign] ‘Heydude Country‘ in recent weeks to Jelly Roll to Travis Hunter, who is the Heisman Trophy winner — we’ve been doing a lot of work with [Hunter] with our [slip-on mesh] Hey20 product, because he’s a fisherman. Riley Green, the country music superstar, is also part of the Heydude team now. And we’ve got something amazing coming this fall around our ‘cozy story.’ It involves a major celebrity. We’ve also got something else cool with a major celebrity who has a major brand of her own. That will be arriving during the back-to-school time.”

What other platforms are you experimenting with this year?

“Pinterest, most notably — in addition to the bulwarks of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook — is where we see a lot of our communities for both brands sharing great ideas on how they’re making their shoes even more personal. They’re also giving us ideas of partners we should be considering, based on things we’re seeing on Pinterest and Reddit. They’re informing us, but also allowing us to begin to share some of our storytelling on these platforms.”

Right now, a lot of consumers are being cautious about their spending. What are Crocs and Heydude doing to remain relevant and stay top of mind with consumers?

“The relevance is ongoing, from sports to music to gaming. Every single day, there’s something new and exciting coming from one of these two brands. But we do understand that the consumer globally and in the United States is feeling some economic pressures. Both brands deliver something that consumers can depend on and is lasting. We think, during this time of economic hardship, we offer great value and, even beyond that, great product for reliability, self-expression and all the reasons why people buy footwear in 2025.”