A lot of people don’t know this because they have better things to do with their time, but East Coasters have been waging a cold civil war against each other for decades. Not over pizza, beer, or politics — over dad boat shoes. You’re either Team Sebago Docksides or Team Sperry Top-Siders, and their rivalry makes the Lawsons and Hills look like friendly neighbors in comparison. If you’re Team Sperry, though, I have bad news for you. Sebago just revealed a Docksides boat-shoe-shaped boat in Amsterdam, and that may as well be the end of it. Sebago rules, and Sperry drools.
According to Sebago, the Docksides boat shoe-shaped boat is on “a special Boat Tour” to celebrate the company’s 80th anniversary, a tour that included several days exploring Amsterdam’s many canals. But per Women’s Wear Daily the Dutch aren’t actually Sebago’s special favorites, and the Seba-boat has already moved onto Italy. Which actually marks a return of sorts, since it was in Milan before leaving for the Netherlands. But even the boat shoe-shaped boat couldn’t resist the allure of the Pitti Immagine Uomo, a fancy menswear show that’s currently taking place in Florence, Italy.
The best part, though, is that, while the Sebago Docksides boat is definitely a marketing stunt, there’s a little more to it than you might have expected. Because the boat shoe people didn’t commission a new boat-shoe-shaped boat to take to Europe. Instead, Sebago’s owners claim they found it.
Semi-abandoned assets
You’ll never catch anyone here complaining about a weirdly styled boat, but there’s always going to be something a little less special about a novelty boat built as a marketing stunt. Unless that boat was originally built for a marketing stunt many decades ago, owned by the company’s founder, effectively abandoned at some point, discovered, and then restored by the company’s new owners. That’s pretty neat. As Lorenzo Boglione, co-CEO of Sebago’s latest parent company, BasicNet, told Women’s Wear Daily:
“When we acquired the brand, there were a number of semi-abandoned assets sitting in warehouses around the world,” he said. “While the transaction was being finalized, our first priority was to secure and register the brand properly worldwide. After that, we turned our attention to those assets, including shoe lasts held by suppliers and, notably, the boat stored in a warehouse outside London, which had served as the European headquarters for the brand pre-Brexit.
“The boat had originally been conceived by the historic Sebago team, and it makes perfect sense. Sebago became iconic through the boat shoe. For years, the boat just sat there as an object of curiosity. But the more we looked at it, the more we understood its beauty, its logic, its instant wow factor and its unexpectedness. Sending the boat around as a design object — a floating billboard — became a natural idea,” he said.
Sadly, other than mentioning that the restoration process involved converting the Se-boat-go to run on electric power, neither the press release nor the Women’s Wear Daily article include the kinds of details we’re interested in here at Boatlopnik, such as age, origin, original powertrain, current top speed, or whether anyone other than Sebago employees will get a chance to drive it. So fingers crossed Sebago PR gets back to us with answers to those questions. As for Sperry, well, it’s just going to have to come up with a better idea if it wants to compete.
