Crocs, Inc. reiterated that it is not selling, never has sold and does not plan to sell its Crocs branded merchandise to Costco Wholesale Corp.

 

But, such emphatic statements do not mean Costco can’t sell Crocs.  The retailer said Wednesday that its access to branded goods, including Crocs, is improving as the economy worsens. That has helped prop up sales of women’s apparel and other non-food products at the warehouse club, Costco EVP and CFO Richard Galanti told analysts in a conference call.


“There's an availability of more branded stuff out there,” he said. “We, in fact, are seeing quite a bit more activity from some of the variety of non-food manufacturers that historically would not sell to us directly and I think that's certainly a direct relationship to the fact that – from what we read out there about weakness in mall-type sales and small apparel store-type sales…things like name- brand jeans and name-brand women's apparel and Crocs and the like.”


When pressed by an analyst on whether Costco now had a direct relationship with Crocs, however, Galanti declined to elaborate.  News of Galanti’s remarks prompted Crocs CEO Ron Snyder to issue a press release Thursday.


“While there have been rumors and speculation that we are now selling our Crocs-branded footwear to Costco, this is untrue,” Snyder said. “We have not sold Crocs-branded products to Costco nor have we authorized any of our customers to sell our products to Costco; however, we have discovered instances where we believe our products were being sold indirectly to Costco and we promptly terminated those relationships upon learning of that behavior.  We are continuing to take aggressive measures to prevent this from happening…”