Inspiring business in-focus: TOMS

Every month or so, I take a look at a company that has both inspired me with its mission and impressed me with its results. Over time, I hope to introduce you to businesses that you might not have come across before: businesses that have successfully built purpose into their profit models.

This month’s business is one that’s probably already been on your radar.

Even if you didn’t happen to be watching American Idol on May 5th 2009*, you cannot fail to have heard of TOMS. You might even be wearing some.

The story goes a little something like this: in 2006, Blake Mycoskie goes travelling in South America. He identifies a problem — millions of children growing up without shoes — and finds a solution by founding TOMS. Blending consumerism with charity, Mycoskie invented the simple concept that for every pair of TOMS shoes bought, another was donated to a child in need.

Ten years later, the business has given away over 60 million pairs of shoes, and is worth over $625 million. Here’s that story in action.

TOMS’ rise from gap year to global brand has been well told and well copied — everyone from Unilever to Walgreens have been inspired by Mycoskie’s one-for-one model. Mycoskie himself is a master storyteller, and much of TOMS’ growth and social influence has depended on this: famously, while Nike spends billions on marketing, millennials still prefer TOMS, whose own advertising spend is zero.

But the fourth act — the tale of process and reinvention — is worth hearing again.

Like many ‘philanthropreneurs and heropreneurs’ before him, Mycoskie has received criticism for the sustainability of his signature one-for-one model. In trying to solve a problem, he has unearthed many others. As such, some of his critics have accused him of masking, rather than solving, a humanitarian problem — and potentially putting local shoemakers and retailers out of business.

While Mycoskie admits that he is “not in the business of poverty alleviation”, he has turned each failing into an improvement, solving rather than shying away from the plague of criticism that often goes hand in hand with ‘doing good’.

As a result, TOMS has embarked on a wider social mission, including job creation in the countries where they give; a social entrepreneurship development programme; investment in disease and cause-related organisations; and more thorough integration of giving across the health and education of entire communities, beyond what goes on their feet.

Meanwhile, the one-for-one model lives on, now extended into other product-philanthropic areas: handbags for safe birth; coffee for clean water; backpacks for anti-bullying initiatives. Each year, Mycoskie will announce a new one-for-one; enlarging both the TOMS empire and its social impact with each iteration.

The TOMS tale — of evolution in entrepreneurship — tells us that the whole story is never the full story.

Equally, it’s important to recognise that no single business model has the perfect method for social impact. As well as popularising the ‘triple bottom line’ business framework for a millennial audience, TOMS has shown the world that business’ need to be part of the solution, not the problem.

And that’s something we can all take forward. Speaking of which, do forward this email to anyone who believes — as we do — in a better business world. If that’s how you’re reading this, take a second to sign-up here.

* the moment a 60 second TOMS commercial first went mainstream.

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