In 2006, American traveler Blake Mycoskie befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Blake returned to Argentina with a group of family, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes made possible by TOMS customers.According to NPR there is a new breed of entrepreneurs who want to help the world not simply make gobs of money. It is a type of socially minded business model. Giving is built into the system and Yale is offering managerial programs for this new breed of socially minded business leaders.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Buy One, Give One Away
I was listening to NPR today and heard about this company - TOMS Shoes.
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3 comments:
Kudos. I think this kind of thing is connected to the computer. The social contract is coming back. Doing good is powerful marketing. This is the kind of thing that kept capitalistic abuse at bay in the early days.
When the corporations got big and invisible, they didn't care how many dead bodies they had to walk over for their quarterly profits. They didn't own a factory in the town where they lived anymore, it was game on.
Now there's a forum again, a village square where people are talking about them, and they live here. They're forced to let a little humanity back into their business plan.
Now, because of communication on the computer, Nike and Starbucks are trying to be model citizens instead of sweatshops. It's just what is expected. It's the social contract. Glad to see it.
I'm impressed on first glance.
Thanks. I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks.
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