TOMS Shoes is one-for-one

Blake Mycoskie is no stranger to the concept of a socially conscientious business model, the 33-year-old founder of TOMS Shoes, built his company around one simple model: one-for-one.

“I was sitting on a field on a farm one day, and I had an epiphany,” Mycoskie told Time Magazine in 2007.

The epiphany came during a trip to Argentina in January of 2006 where he met several local children whom were without shoes.

At the same time, he met social workers who were trying to provide shoes by collecting old shoes in the community and giving them to children in need.

“I knew there had to be a better way to solve this, a more sustainable way. So, I came up with the idea for TOMS. We would start a shoe company, not a charity, but an actual for profit company that would sell shoes and for every pair of shoes we sold, we’d give one back to one of these children that didn’t have shoes,” Mycoskie said in a speech for Revision3, a San Francisco Internet television show in 2008.

The logic for choosing a for-profit company instead of a charity was the idea of sustainability. Mycoskie knew that starting a charity meant his efforts would be at the mercy of willing donators, whether that meant monetary donations, or volunteer time. He knew that if another disaster should occur that required immediate attention, philanthropists would, rightfully, send their contributions and/or volunteer to those efforts. A for-profit company made much more sense in guaranteeing not only that he could start a successful one for one company, but that he could sustain it for years to come with the profits made.

When TOMS started out, the goal was to provide shoes for one village of 250 children.

“We ended up selling 10,000 in the first six months out of my apartment,” Mycoskie said on Revision3.

Since its inception nearly four year ago, TOMS has come a long way.

What began with a staff of seven full-time employees, six sales representative and eight interns, who returned to Argentina and hand-placed shoes on the feet of 10,000 children has turned into a successful business venture that has donated 150,000 shoes as of August and estimates it can donate 1 million shoes by 2012.

What Mycoskie never expected was that his business model would encourage others to rethink their old business models. His efforts have earned him an invitation to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative.

During the New York Stock Exchange’s Global Entrepreneurship Week in November, Mycoskie was invited to ring the opening bell and to present the “Movers and Changers” award to student entrepreneurs who developed business models for advancing social change.

Electing Mycoskie for this task sends a message that the market is eager for economic and social change.

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