People are often surprised to hear that Blake Mycoskie, and not someone named Tom, started TOMS Shoes, a company that gives a free pair of shoes away to a child in need every time a pair is bought.
TOMS was founded in 2006, and since then the company has given away approximately 140,000 pairs of shoes. Mycoskie hopes to have given over 300,000 shoes by then end of 2009, according to the company’s Web site.
“When I started TOMS, the idea was that we’d sell a pair today so we could give a pair away tomorrow,” Mycoskie said. “They would be called Shoes for Tomorrow, and then [the name changed to] Tomorrow Shoes. When I was designing the shoes, there was a little white tag that goes on the side. There was no way I was going to get tomorrow on this little tag, so I just shortened it to TOMS, not knowing I’d be plagued the rest of my life because everybody wanted to meet this guy named Tom.”
Mycoskie, brought to the campus by the Kennedy Political Union, came to talk to AU students about his experiences and what inspired him to create company TOMS.
“I was taking a vacation learning to play polo and just experiencing Argentina when I met some young people doing volunteer work,” Mycoskie said. “They were doing a shoe drive, so they were going around collecting used shoes and then giving them to the kids in the villages that didn’t have shoes.”
While Mycoskie thought the shoe drive was great, he wanted to do something more sustainable.
“I was worried about the sustainability of what they were doing, and I wanted to create a way to be able to give shoes to kids over and over again without being dependent on donations,” Mycoskie said. “That’s when I came with the idea of TOMS shoes. We would sell a pair and for every pair we’d give one away.”
Giving away shoes in Argentina is about more than protecting children’s feet for Mycoskie; it is about providing them with an education since shoes are required to attend school.
“A woman told me that because of these shoes all three of her kids were going to be able to get to go to school everyday,” Mycoskie said. “She explained to me that for the past few years they only had one pair of shoes for the three kids, so every kid only got to go to school every third day because they didn’t have shoes every day.”
TOMS sends out a group of volunteers every month on a shoe drop to distribute the shoes to children in need.
“[For the first shoe drop], we went to Argentina, and we literally hand placed 10,000 pairs on kids feet all over Argentina,” Mycoskie said.
This shoe drop put Mycoskie’s project in perspective and made him realize the difference he had the potential to make.
“When we were in Argentina and I looked over to see my amazing mom or my sister putting these shoes on these kids [is] when I [realized] that this really could be big and we can really provide a lot of kids with shoes and make a huge difference in the world,” Mycoskie said.
Mycoskie’s business has become a success even though it has been around for less than three years.
“My investment in a for-profit business with the one-for-one model has already given ten times what it would’ve had we started a charity,” Mycoskie said.
Such success brought Mycoskie to the attention of a number of designers.
“In forty years, [Ralph Lauren] has never co-branded, designed or done a collaboration with a single other designer in the world,” Mycoskie said. “His first one was TOMS shoes. The only reason Ralph wanted to do it, the only reason he felt compelled, was because he believed in our cause [and] wanted to be associated with it.”
Ralph Lauren is not the only star that has worked with Mycoskie. The band Hanson sold TOMS shoes on one of their tours and accompanied him on one of his shoe drops.
“I’ve never had a better live music experience than in the middle of the jungle of South Africa, sitting around a campfire with the Hansons and all these kids singing MMMBop,” Mycoskie said.
Mycoskie had already started five businesses by the age of 32, including an advertising business and a college laundry service.
“I really don’t have a desire to do anything else at this stage of my life because I think it’s very hard to find a business where you can create a business, be creative and at the same time help people, so I feel like it’s the perfect combination,” Mycoskie said.
KPU’s next speaker will be Meghan McCain, the daughter of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain on Sept. 23.
You can reach this writer at news@theeagleonline.com.
