ABSTRACT

TOMS Shoes (TOMS) is a for-profi t business with a philanthropic dimension. Its mission statement is simple: “to make life more comfortable.” It seeks to do this by selling a fashionable product while helping those in need.3 In 2006, Blake Mycoskie started TOMS Shoes after a trip to Argentina where he witnessed the poverty among villagers so extreme that they could not even aff ord a pair of shoes. The 29-year-old Mycoskie returned to the United States with 200 Argentinean shoes and a mission. He went from one retail store to another with a unique business proposal. He would start an organization with an innovative One for One business model: for each pair of shoes purchased, one pair of shoes is donated. Finally, a few Los Angeles boutiques agreed to sell the shoes. Mycoskie’s idea was picked up by the Los Angeles Times, which ran an article on his burgeoning business. To his surprise, that weekend garnered him $88,000 in orders. Two years after its inception, TOMS grossed $9.6 million in revenue.4 As of June 2013, TOMS earned an estimated $205 million in revenue, with 30 percent of sales coming from e-commerce.5 TOMS was valued in August 2014 at $625 million, which includes debt.In 2014, TOMs sold 50 percent of its business to Bain Capital, which took the company private.6