Read the short write-up page 47, “TOMS Shoes Makes Impact with Its O

Read the short write-up page 47, “TOMS Shoes Makes Impact with Its One-for-One Model”. Answer the following questions in your post:

Some critics believe that sustainable and socially oriented business models like the one at Toms Shoes are a passing fad.

To what degree do you agree or disagree with this claim?
Can you think of some other examples of organizations that are doing well by doing good?
What are some areas in which you have thought about making a difference?

TOMS Shoes Makes Impact with Its “One-for-One” Model

By now, many people have heard of Blake Mycoskie, the 36-year-old “social entrepreneur” and founder of TOMS Shoes (short for Tomorrow’s Shoes). Before becoming famous, Mycoskie started several entrepreneurial ventures. As a business school student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he started a door-to-door laundry service for students. Later, he created an outdoor media company that was purchased by Clear Channel. In 2002, he teamed up with his sister to compete in the CBS reality show The Amazing Race, which brought him to Argentina, where he witnessed large-scale poverty.

While traveling back to Argentina in 2006, Mycoskie met an American woman who was coordinating a shoe drive to deliver donated shoes to poor Argentinean children. Barefoot children are exposed to dangerous hookworm, tetanus, and other soil-based ailments. Mycoskie noticed that children who received donated shoes often got the wrong size. He had a “light-bulb” moment and came up with the idea of creating a sustainable, for-profit business that could fund donations of new shoes for poor children. Known as the “one-for-one” sustainability model, for every pair of shoes that the company sells, it donates a pair of shoes to a poor child somewhere in the world.

Modeled after a popular Argentinean shoe known as an alpargata, TOMS Shoes are available in many colors and styles for men, women, and children online and through retail outlets like Whole Foods and Nordstrom. The company has expanded its product offerings to eyeglasses, coffee, hand bags, and apparel.

TOMS Shoes was not the first company to use the “one-for-one” sustainability model, but its success is inspiring many other entrepreneurs to create their own socially conscious ventures that make profit while helping others. In 2011, Mycoskie wrote a book titled Start Something That Matters, in which he offers six suggestions that others can follow to develop a sustainable venture that is meaningful. His six suggestions are to find your story, face your fears, be resourceful without resources, keep it simple, build trust, and realize that giving is good business.

Wanting to help children have adequate shoes to protect their feet, founder Blake Mycoskie created TOMS Shoes. The company matches every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes for a child in need, creating the model of One for One.®

© Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

The TOMS Shoes socially conscious and sustainable business model is having impact. As of April 2016, TOMS Shoes had given more than 50 million pairs of new shoes to children in 60 countries. Blake Mycoskie is proving that a company can do