Pioneering the union of profit and purpose, founder Blake Mycoskie grew TOMS from humble beginnings in Venice Beach into a global force for good. For nearly 20 years, we’ve walked this journey together with you. Toms' business model is known as the "one for one concept" model, which is referring to the company's promise to deliver a pair of free shoes to a child in need for every sale of their retail product.[31] The countries involved have included Argentina, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Rwanda, South Africa and the United States.
based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, an entrepreneur from Arlington, Texas, the company designs and markets shoes as well as eyewear, coffee, apparel and handbags.
Blake Mycoskie visited Argentina in 2002 while competing in the second season of The Amazing Race with his sister.[11] He returned on vacation in January 2006, and met a woman who was volunteering to deliver shoes to children. Mycoskie offered to help and has cited the shoe distribution experience, and the many shoeless children he encountered, as the birth of his idea for his eventual company.[12]
He decided to develop a type of alpargata (a simple canvas slip-on shoe that is popular in Argentina)[13] for the North American market, with the goal of providing a new pair of free shoes to youth of Argentina and other developing nations for every pair sold.[14]According to Mycoskie, Bill Gates encouraged him by saying that the lack of shoes was a major contributor to diseases in children.[15]
Upon returning to the U.S., Mycoskie sold the online driver education company that he was running for $500,000 to finance Toms Shoes.[14]
The company name is derived from the word "tomorrow,"[16] and evolved from the original concept, "Shoes for Tomorrow Project."[17] Mycoskie initially commissioned Argentine shoe manufacturers to make 250 pairs of shoes. Sales officially began in May 2006.[14] After an article ran in the Los Angeles Times, the company received order requests for nine times the available stock online,[14] and 10,000 pairs were sold in the first year. The first batch of 10,000 free shoes were distributed in October 2006 to Argentine children.[8][18][19][20]
In 2007, the company launched its first annual "One Day Without Shoes" event, which encouraged participants to go shoeless for one day in order to raise awareness about the impact shoes can have on a child's life. The event has had corporate sponsors such as AOL, Flickr, and the Discovery Channel.[21]
In October 2007, Toms Shoes received the People's Design Award, as determined by an online popularity contest by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.[22]
By 2011, over 500 retailers carried the brand globally and in the same year, Toms launched its eyewear line.[23] By 2012 over two million pairs of new shoes had been given to children in developing countries around the world. The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at the University of New Mexico has described the company as an example of social entrepreneurship.[14][24]
The company was taken over by its creditors: Jefferies Financial Group Inc, Nexus Capital Management LP, and Brookfield Asset Management Inc in December 2019, and founder Mycoskie ceased to be an owner
