I remember Vans as a small local shoe company with their unique thick rubber sole deck shoes. The great thing about them was that you could take your own fabric over to the factory and they would custom make shoes for you. So I had several matching shirt & shoes outfits over the years.
Sometime around the end of the 1960s the factory had a devastating fire - you could see it for miles with the blackest smoke I had ever seen. (All that rubber, I guess).
In the following years Vans reputation grew and the family took the company public. They expanded with more factories, more products and more advertising.
In the end, the marketing proved to be the most lucrative part of the company. At the end of the 1990's they closed all their factories and laid off all the workers (about 3000). They just shopped all the work out to various factories in China. So, today Vans is just the marketing company sponsoring events and selling shoes made by other companies, but with their label.