Vans West End – Oxford Circus

Owning & creating a customer destination

The lessons for us all:

“Customer community & loyalty must come through more than just selling product. It must come through ‘owning’ something which is central and essential to your customer community. As a brand you must own the responsibility of curating, evolving and delivering this singular passion of your customers”

Paul Van Doren, his brother James, and Gordon C. Lee opened the first Vans store as “The Van Doren Rubber Company” on March 16, 1966, at 704 East Broadway in Anaheim, California. The business manufactured shoes and sold them directly to the public. Upon opening, twelve customers purchased Vans deck shoes on the first day.

Vans began, and has continued to be a brand at the centre of a community, and that community is skateboarding. It has always done things in its own way, but always with people at the centre.

The original Vans skateboard logo was designed in Costa Mesa, California, in the 1970s by Mark Van Doren, son of then-President and co-owner James Van Doren, at age 13. The design was a stencil, allowing the logo to be spray-painted onto his skateboards.

Vans’ shoes have also and often been customized cosmetically by wearers, with many of their painting and drawing patterns being adopted by the company for their official models. Most notably, the checkerboard pattern, popular in ska and punk culture, was adopted after the company noticed skateboarders drawing it on their shoes.

And so Vans entered popular culture. It reached US nationwide popularity when, in 1982, Sean Penn wore a pair of Vans checkerboard slip-ons in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Whilst Major League Baseball pitcher Michael Lorenzen who grew up skateboarding with Vans, as of 2023 plays baseball wearing customized Vans, rather than traditional baseball shoes.

Vans has always been involved and taken on the responsibility of enabling the skateboard community. Vans opened its first skate park in 1998 at The Outlets at Orange, in Orange, California. It featured a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) indoor street course. The company built its second skate park in Huntington Beach, California, which opened to the public in 2010.

Vans became a special brand for London opening a skate park in the centre of London, in The Old Vic Tunnels. It was called House of Vans and became an iconic destination for skateboarders, with its shop and as a location for music and cultural events.

And so we come to Vans West End, situated at the very heart of London in Oxford Circus. The store has been there since 2009, but has been extended and re-invented in 2024 to a be the centre for Vans skateboarding culture, a space that converts from a shop into a skate park, into an exhibition area, and music and entertainment venue.

Vans West End is a one-of-a-kind skateable retail installation – a next-level retail and community destination, celebrating the cultures that made Vans what it is today – skateboarding, music and art.

A 200 square metre stone skate ramp runs throughout the entire store, which can be fully merchandised with interchangeable glass modules when not in use as a skate obstacle. Designed as a single large block of stone, entirely laid and polished on-site, the ramp will be the beating heart of the store, used for regular skate lessons, demos and events by the Vans skate team and local skate schools.

On the retail side of things, the introduction of third-party partners is a first for the brand in Europe. A curated selection of partners that align with Vans counterculture values include The Great Frog, Gomi and Lovenskate.

Famed London jewellers, The Great Frog have merged their punk and metal aesthetics with Vans DNA to create bespoke Vans branded pieces. Brighton-based Gomi have created custom printed speakers and powerbanks from recycled e-bikes and have worked with Vans to design a collection of checkerboard speakers and powerbanks, carried exclusively at Vans West End.

In every sense from its location and store aesthetic, its combination of boarding, culture and music, and its collaboration with local designers and artisans, this is a Vans community store. It brings fun and fashion, taking its responsibility as a guardian of skateboard culture, and the community that embraces it, to a whole new level.

Visit the Vans West End experience at Oxford Circus

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