Interview with TOMS founder

I'm so glad that you loved that video Kiera! While it doesn't necessarily deal with the manufacturing of the products we are examining, I think it asks some excellent questions about how the "west" or privileged parts of the world interact with the areas of the world that make the products we consume.

This is the text of an interview with TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie that I found on the website treehugger.com. The original interview was a podcast and was recorded on September 11, 2008. I think this begins to answer some of the questions I had about the manufacturing process of TOMS, and further elaborates the principals on which the company was founded.
 
TreeHugger: So, Blake, you make shoes. Big deal. What's different about TOMS?

Blake Mycoskie: TOMS is really simple. For every pair of shoes that we sell, we also give a pair away to a child somewhere in the world that doesn't have shoes.
It really came from an idea that I had when I met some children down in Argentina a couple of years ago that didn't have shoes. I wanted to give them shoes, but I didn't just want to give them shoes once. And I didn't want to start a charity, because I had no background in charities.
So I decided to use my entrepreneurial background and create a business model that would give one-for-one, so we could build a business by selling shoes and, at the same time, give them away.



TH: Tell me more about that experience in Argentina when this dawned on you.

BM: I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started five companies in the last 12 years, mainly in media and technology. I was just kind of burned out. I went down to Argentina looking for some time to relax, experience the culture, take it all in.
I spent a couple of weeks doing that. In the process, I met some expats that were down there doing some really great social work in some of the villages on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I asked them if I could tag along.
I'm always looking for new experiences. When I went with them to one village in particular, I noticed that most of the children did not have shoes, and that if they did have shoes, they had a shoe that was way too big, or duct-taped, or a flip-flop with a hole in it.
It just shocked me to some degree. Shoes aren't that expensive, so why don't they have shoes? And even more so, after I stopped a few of the kids and looked at their feet, they had cuts. They had hookworm. They had infections.
I thought that this is something that seems so easy to solve. There's this inexpensive shoe in Argentina, the alpargata. Why don't we just give them those? I remember having this discussion with the girl I was with at the time, and she was like, "Well, Blake, I think it's beautiful that you want to help them and give them shoes, but giving them shoes once isn't really going to do anything for them."
I said, "OK, well, what if we started a charity and we started giving them shoes every year, or every six months?" We started talking through this and what I realized at that point was, for me, the charity model wouldn't work. Because I could maybe go to my friends and family and ask them for money to donate to my shoe charity once and they might do it. Maybe they'd do it the second time.
But when it comes to the third, fourth, and fifth year, I just know my attention span. It would be hard for me to get excited about going out and continuing to ask my friends and family for money for my shoe charity.
So I really wanted to create a model where I would never have to do that. It would be sustained by a product that people would buy everyday anyway. That's when I came up with the idea of TOMS.
The idea that day on the farm was, "I'm going to make this shoe. I'm going to make this traditional Argentine shoe that people haven't seen here in the US yet. I'm going to sell it and for every pair I sell, I'm going to give one back to these kids in Argentina until they all have shoes. I'm going to continue to do it so they always have shoes." That was the idea two and a half years ago and it hasn't changed one bit since.




TH: Tell me about the implication of having shoes.

BM: I would say that there are really three things that you find. Number one is just that having shoes helps someone with their personal security and understanding. It gives them self-worth. It shows that they're valued. It's almost a sense of wealth in these communities.
It almost becomes a passport into other things that are very important. School, for instance, is probably the easiest example. A lot of kids cannot go to school unless they have a proper uniform, and a proper uniform includes shoes.
So, literally, I've met thousands of families that the first thing they say to us when we give them shoes is, "Oh my God, my kid will now get to go to school." That's a big deal.
To think that there are schools with open seats in the developing world that don't allow kids to come in because they don't have a pair of shoes… To me, it's just ridiculous. But that's just the custom that they have. So giving them a pair of shoes allows education. That's one example.
Another example is that a lot of the kids, especially kids in their teenage years, they're responsible for a lot of daily chores. One of those daily chores in a lot of communities, especially in places like Ethiopia and South Africa, is getting fresh water for the family.
Usually, if there is a fresh water source, it's usually one to two miles away from where the villages are, because a lot of villages share this water source. That requires a lot of walking, and the road's usually rocky. Their feet get cut up and then they get infected, so it becomes a health issue, too.
The third piece of it is a derivative of that, but it's much more intense, and it's actually where my largest passion lies right now, my biggest focus. There are areas of the world (southern Ethiopia is an example) where there are horrible, horrible foot diseases that are completely preventable with shoes.
One of them is called podoconiosis. Podoconiosis basically destroys the lymphatic system and causes people's feet to inflame almost to the size of an elephant's foot. What that does is it ostracizes the children and young teenagers from work, from school, any type of human interaction. People feel that they're almost like lepers, they don't want to be anywhere near them. They don't know if they're cursed. So they have no life when they get this disease.
There are 300,000 people in southern Ethiopia with this disease right now; and none of them should have this disease because the same silicone in the soil that's causing it in Ethiopia exists in Hawaii and the mountainous regions of France. The only reason people in Hawaii and France don't have it is because they have shoes.
The only reason people in Ethiopia do have it is because they don't have shoes. So one of the big things is we're really focusing on trying to prevent the next generation of young Ethiopian kids from getting this, and then educating the families about how important it is to wear the shoes once we give them to them.
TH: Is there a TOM? Is this a secret code? Is this a person? Is this your alter ego?

BM: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, I know. It's so funny. A lot of times I'll show up at a speaking engagement or something and I'll introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Blake Mycoskie." They'll look at me like...”where's Tom?” At that point, I explain that I'm basically the closest thing you're ever going to get to Tom.
There is no TOM. We like to say that everyone is TOM, because what TOMS stands for, it's a derivative of the word 'tomorrow' and the idea that we have a better tomorrow.
When we started the project, it was called the Shoes for Tomorrow Project. Then it was just Shoes for Tomorrow. Then that didn't fit on the label, so I just named it TOMS.
You buy a pair today, we give a pair away tomorrow. And collectively, everyone who buys a pair, everyone who works here, everyone who's an intern, we all are TOMS. So that's who TOM is.
TH: You describe yourself as a serial entrepreneur, but you also say that your background is in media and stuff like that. Do you come from a line of shoemakers, fashionistas? How did you figure out the actual nuts and bolts of shoemaking?

BM: Well, it's funny. I have absolutely no experience or background whatsoever in fashion or shoes. To be truthful, in the five businesses that I've started, I have no background or experience in any of those areas.
One of my businesses was a laundry and dry cleaning company. One was an outdoor advertising company. One was a television network. One was a tech company that provides education online.
What I find is I'm just very curious about the world and I guess when needs aren't being met, I like to create businesses that meet them. So, often times, it's a long learning curve because it takes a lot to learn the stuff.
I don't personally think that TOMS Shoes got comfortable until about a year ago. So for the first year and a half, I think I was doing a really good job of telling the story and a really poor job of making shoes.
I have hired a lot of people from some of the best shoe and lifestyle brands out there (Nike, Asics, Tommy Bahama) to help me actually make good products, which we do now. But yeah, no background whatsoever. I just learned how to do it, and it was fueled by my passion to help these initial kids in Argentina.

TH: The design of the shoe is based on this traditional Argentine shoe. What do they call that?

BM: They call it the alpargata. It's a traditional shoe. It has been around for hundreds of years. Farmers have been wearing it primarily.
Just in the last 10 to 20 years it has become a hip, cool thing for the young kids and people to wear, even just around the house. So it is not just farmers anymore. But that is really where it started. The reason why it started there is the farmers wanted something really comfortable, really lightweight that would also dry quickly.
So the nice thing about TOMS is that even though it is a canvas shoe, if you get it wet—at the beach or the pool or anywhere—it will dry really, really quickly in the sun.
It is also very, very lightweight. So it’s not like a lot of canvas shoes like Converse or Keds that have that a really thick, rubber vulcanized sole.
Ours has a very thin EVA rubber composite that basically makes the shoe very light. If you put our shoe on a scale and you put a Havaiana flip-flop on a scale, our shoe actually weighs less than a Havaiana flip-flop. But it’s a full shoe.
So it's really lightweight. I think that is part of the ingenious design of the Argentines who made it 150 years ago.

TH: Do you have any Argentine friends who were tripped out by seeing all these hipsters walking around in them?

BM: So many! They all think it's crazy. I mean literally, even in the highest levels of government in Argentina, from past President Kirchner to his wife, who is now the President, they just can't believe that I have taken a shoe that has been around for hundreds of years and basically created this little movement in the United States and Europe around it. They love it.

TH: Let's talk about the response of the people who are receiving the shoes and where this is going on. I have heard you describe them as “shoe drops.” What is your distribution network? And what is people's reaction when you roll up in your truck with thousands of shoes?

BM: Well, I think the first thing is the word “shoe drop,” while it has become a great phrase for what we do, it's a little bit misleading, because we don't drop any shoes. We actually hand place every single pair of shoes onto a child's foot.
So that is one of the first and most important things to realize. This is a very, very intimate giving environment. We believe that the child gets as much satisfaction and joy out of the personal one-on-one interaction with someone from the first world as they do from the actual shoes. So, that is the first thing.
The second thing is that one of the big parts of what shoe drops are, is they are not just a means to an end of delivering all these shoes that we have promised. But they are ways to involve all kinds of people from all over the world in the idea of giving. Oftentimes it is their first time.
So we take 15 volunteers every two weeks to Argentina, and then sometimes even to Ethiopia in South Africa, to help us give away these shoes. We have a whole team of people for whom their sole job at TOMS is to review applications, to book travel, to organize these trips.
Because we believe that it is not just that we’re helping these people get shoes. But we're also about helping people in the first world have a quality, safe, life-changing experience in the idea of giving.
Hopefully when they go with us on one of these trips, they come back and they have the passion to do something on their own, or to get more involved in TOMS, so that more and more people can benefit from this concept.

TH: So can we tell TreeHugger Radio listeners that potentially, if they apply, they could go down and partake in one of these operations?

BM: Absolutely. You just go to our website at tomsshoes.com and in the section about Our Cause there is an application.
We also are doing some shoe drops in the United States this year, especially in the New Orleans area. There are still some school districts that are still hurt from everything that has happened there over the past three or four years and also in the Delta Mississippi area.
So whether you want to go to Argentina or Africa or do a shoe drop here in the United States, you can definitely sign up to go. It is really cool because we have developed an alumni of people who have gone. They still get together and have dinner and they interact. It is just a really cool community of people, because once you go, it really is a life-changing experience.

TH: Have there been naysayers along the way? And has there been any negative feedback, either on the purchasing end where people buy TOMS, or on the receiving end from those people who are taking the donations of shoes?

BM: Definitely not on the taking donations end. Every village and every place we have worked, and every nonprofit NGO partner, they are extremely grateful. They are in disbelief that someone would want to give.
A lot of people could potentially come and give them the most obvious necessities, and those are definitely needed and appreciated. But to give someone a pair of shoes, it's like, "Man this is cool."
It's like no matter who you are or where you are or where you live, getting a new pair of shoes is an awesome experience. So there is this great gratitude that we get everywhere we go.
It's weird. You even see this in the US culture. You might see kids living in the ghetto who can't afford school books. Somehow they are scraping enough money together to buy a nice pair of Nike basketball shoes. It's just crazy.
But for people all over the world, no matter what their economic level is, a pair of shoes is a real sense of pride. So on the giving end, whether it is for health benefits or personal pride and security, we have had nothing but great response on the shoes.
On the selling side, I think the only negative response we have had is—because the company has grown so fast—we haven't been able to satisfy all of our retailers or even customers in the way that they would want.
Typically, most people who are selling to these top retailers or in Nordstrom or in one of these big, big companies, are brands like Cole Haan and Nike and Tory Burke. So they are hundred-million-dollar companies.
So they have five people in customer service. They have 10 people in purchasing. So the problem is that you have got this little company in Santa Monica, California with a bunch of people who have no idea about shoes dealing to top executives at Nordstrom's.
They are like, "Dude, why can't you ship this at the right time?" We are like, "Because we have one person trying to ship to 400 stores." On the business level, I think that people are hoping that we can staff, and we are staffing. We have gone from nine employees last year to now having 42 full-time employees. So we are definitely staffing up.
They want to sell our shoes because our customers want them. But then they have to deal with a company that is one tenth the size or one twentieth the size of what they are used to dealing with.

TH: Do you have peers in the business world who have heard about your idea of giving a pair of shoes away for every one you sell who say that this is loco?

BM: Yeah. I think that when I first started, everyone thought it was crazy. It was one of those things where people said, "I don't understand. Why don't you just give away a percentage of your profits and really focus on that?"
The one-for-one model seemed very, very crazy to everyone I talked to when I first started. But now that it is actually showing that it can work, people are feeling like it is something that actually makes sense.
When I have a chance to really break down the numbers and describe that we don't spend any money on advertising but it's all word-of-mouth, then people say, "Man maybe this actually makes sense."
Because by doing something so bold and so gracious, it's going to inspire so many people to want to talk about it. And those people talking about it is better than any advertising that we could ever have spent.
TreeHugger: Blake, is there an environmentally friendly component to the shoes you are making?
Blake Mycoskie: Absolutely. When we first started, we were just trying to learn how to make shoes. We were basically using whatever material we could get our hands on.
But then once we got going and we hired some people who were professionals in the shoe industry, we realized very quickly that our shoes could not only be very environmentally friendly, but also vegan.
There are a lot of vegans out there that want cool, comfortable footwear, but they have trouble finding it because most footwear is made with leather. If you look at 90% of the footwear out there, if it's not a flip-flop, it has some leather component.
So we were able to work along with Whole Foods in developing an eco and vegan shoe that we just released with Whole Foods exclusively about a month ago. They will have the exclusive on it up until the end of the year, and then, in January, we will start selling it on our website and in some of our other select retailers.
In terms of our canvas, it is a blend between our organic canvas and then also some post consumer recycled plastics. It makes for a really strong canvas, which is great because it lasts long, and it's also much more environmentally friendly. So yeah, it is really a win-win for us.

TH: Who is making TOMS and where?

BM: When we first started making them, it was me! We started in Argentina, and we still have a little factory in Argentina where we make about 30% of the shoes.
As we have grown, we have had to source all over the world because we are selling all over the world. That has been a really awesome experience because I’ve gotten the opportunity to visit all these factories.
We now have factories in Ethiopia, which I am very excited about and which are really growing for us. We have factories in Asia. We also have factories in Brazil. So really where we make the shoes depends on the exact TOMS shoe and the material and also where it is being sold.
The great thing is, I think, as our company gets more and more global—we are now selling in eight different countries—everyone wants to have a connection to not only the shoes that are being given away, but also where the shoes are being made.
We are in the process right now of launching our TOMS 2.0 website, and on there we are going to really connect people, maybe even in real time, to all of our different factories and our factory workers.
One of the cool things about visiting the factories is, when I do visit the factories, I always show our 35 minute documentary film that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The great thing is that even if they don't speak the language, they understand through the images what we do. They understand, "Oh, those are the shoes that I am making and they are helping someone."
There is nothing better you can do to build your relationships with your factories then showing them that this is not just a business, this is really a cause and something that is really important to a lot of people. Often times the workers know people who don't have shoes as well, and that makes them really excited.

TH: Are there standards that dictate the conditions of these various factories?

BM: Absolutely. There are standards. One of the things I think we are going to see a lot of in the next five to ten years is better international and global standards for production.
There are not a lot of really specific standards, like if you do this, this, and this, you get this stamp. I think it will be great when we get to that point. So a lot of it is internal monitoring and understanding what is generally perceived as fair trade and fair labor practices.
So what we use is a consulting group, an agency, to help us monitor and to audit both announced and unannounced in all of our factories. It is very important to us. TOMS' whole mission is about helping people.
So we want to make sure that we are not only helping the people who we are giving the shoes to, but that we are providing an environment where people are valued and not taken advantage of from a labor perspective. I feel very confident, having visited all of our factories, that we are doing that very well.

TH: I have heard this model of “buy one, give one away” called one-for-one. Is this a movement? Do you see this spreading into other industries and other products?

BM: I think it's somewhat difficult for it to spread to a lot of different industries because of the general cost of goods, the cost of giving, and the needs that people have around the world.
I do say that part of my vision for TOMS is that we won't always be a shoe company; that we will expand into some additional products where it makes sense. A lot of that will come based on the needs that we encounter when we are traveling around the world and giving out the shoes.
So I think it is safe to say that there will be, in the years to come, additional TOMS products. But I do think it is difficult for this one-for-one model to be applied to a lot of different businesses.
Let's face it, most business people and entrepreneurs are starting businesses to make money. It definitely does not help your bottom line. It might help you to get launched and to exist. But it is very hard to apply this to most industries.
So unless there are new products and new businesses being developed, I think it is not something that a company can just say, "Oh, we are going to add that on to our model," because you really have to build the model based on that.
So I think it will be a catalyst for people to think, though, about incorporating giving into their business in a more transparent way than just as a percentage.

TH: Has the one-for-one thing improved TOMS' bottom line? Do you think TOMS would have been a success were it not for the one-for-one model?

BM: No, I do not. I think that the one-for-one model is the reason that we're here today and the reason why you're interviewing me. I do think that the one-for-one model has allowed us to enter the market, and I think that the fact that the shoes have become fashionable, and they're comfortable, and they're inexpensive, has taken it to the next level.
I think that if the style had not been right and right for the times and right for the economy, I don't think the one-for-one model would work with just any old shoe. So I think it's about a 50-50 push, but I do think that the one-for-one model ultimately will be good for the long-term success of TOMS.
It's very hard in the first few years because you have so much overhead and startup cost already, and then you throw in giving away 200,000 pairs of shoes. It's very tough on us financially, and it's a sacrifice that we make with a smile, though, because it's why we're here. So, I don't think TOMS will ever be a super, super profitable company.
I think it can be profitable, and I think it can do a lot of good, and that's all we really want anyways. So, I think as a profit strategy, it might not make sense, but as a life strategy for me, it definitely makes sense.

So, I think as a profit strategy, it might not make sense, but as a life strategy for me, it definitely makes sense.

TH: Are you guys turning a profit now?

BM: We are not yet. We are very close, but every time we get close to turning a profit, we find out that we need to hire three or four more people, and then we go back into the negative. We're very stable, from a cash flow standpoint, but we're definitely not profitable yet.

TH: What are you going to do if people decide that, next season, they're not interested in the Argentine slipper thing? What then?

BM: Well, actually, we anticipate, at some level, that has to happen. We definitely don't feel like we're setting fashion, but we're a component of it. I'm hoping that we can build this shoe into an iconic silhouette, like a Vans or a Converse that, year after year, people want, but I also am kind of mitigating the risk by developing some new styles.
So there's another shoe that will come out about a year from today, in the fall, that is also based on an Argentine shoe, but it's a little bit more; good for the fall and winter time, so you can wear it year-round, where our shoe is more of a spring/summer shoe, unless you live in southern California or Florida or Texas.
And then also we just launched our first new product and it's called the wrap boot. And it's actually inspired by the polo ponies and the bandages that they use in Argentina. It's only for women, it's very sexy. People have been like, “man, that's pretty sexy and racy for TOMS.”
But you know, our background is Argentina, and Argentina is a very sexy, beautiful, magical place, especially in the polo culture, and the polo players, they come from the farms, so we want to preserve that.

Our background is Argentina, and Argentina is a very sexy, beautiful, magical place...

So we created this boot. It's been incredible. I think in the first week we already sold out of red. We have four other colors that are still in stock available, but we anticipate by the end of the month we'll be completely sold out, and then we won't be able to get new ones in until probably to November, December, for the holidays. But that's been really exciting for me, to introduce something that's a total departure, on some level, from the traditional alpargata, even though it's based on the alpargata, and have it sell so well and so quickly. And all the boots that we sell, we will be matching another special boot to the people in Ethiopia to prevent this disease, podoconiosis.
So they're still one-for-one, but it's a little bit different focus of where the one is being given away. Instead of another TOMS shoe, it's a special boot. So, I'm very excited about that, and I think that's what's going to allow us to sustain our growth and to sustain our commitment to give.

TH: What if Nike or Reebok came along and they said, “Blake, we want to buy TOMS. We're willing to keep the one-for-one model going.” Is this something you'd ever consider?

BM: I don't think so. I probably can say absolutely not, and the reason why is I'm an entrepreneur, and all my life, I always said to people, I'm going to spend the first half or three quarters of my life making as much money as I possibly can, and I'm going to spend the last quarter of my life giving it all away.
And there's many quotes from me in the press from years and years ago of me saying that, before I ever had any businesses that had a philanthropy or charitable cause. So it's something that has been part of my DNA forever, and I thought that's how you had to do it.
But now, with TOMS, I'm realizing I can build a business, I can be creative, and I can be helping people at the same time. And to me, that is the perfect blend. That is, to me, life.
And so, if I sold to Nike for $10 million, what would I do for the next 30, 40, or 50 years? I would spend my time giving that money away. So it makes no sense to sell to another company.
And I think, also, part of the real beauty of TOMS, no matter how big we get, is preserving this culture and this community that we're building. And I think that's a little bit harder to do with the bigger corporations.

But now, with TOMS, I'm realizing I can build a business, I can be creative, and I can be helping people at the same time. And to me, that is the perfect blend. That is, to me, life.

TH: Within your consumers, how much do you think people care about one-for-one, and how much do people care about just the notion of putting on a slick pair of shoes?

BM: I think it kind of goes back to what I said about how we got launched and our success. I think, basically, if I had to draw a line in the sand, I'd bet it's 50/50. I meet a lot of people who, when I say thank you so much for buying TOMS, they're like, oh, yeah, the cause is cool, but I have six pairs of these and I love them, they're so comfortable, or, they really look good with skinny jeans, and it's hard to find a shoe that doesn't look too clunky.
It's really interesting. I mean, I meet a lot of people and I'm just blown away that they're obsessed with the fashion of it, and they kind of politely say, oh, it's really cool what you guys do, but...
But then I meet a lot of other people that are just obsessed with the cause and the giving, and they think the shoe is ugly but they wear it everyday anyways. So I think it's really a split, and I think that's the healthiest place for us to be as a business, as well.

TH: What does the whole idea of sustainable business mean to you? How does that resonate?

BM: Sustainable, to me, means that we are able to sell shoes and have enough profit built in to give a pair away and hire the best people to help grow the message and the mission. So that's what sustainable is in terms of our business.
Now, sustainable, in a lot of businesses, is more focused on the environment and using materials that are environmentally friendly, and that's definitely a component of our business, as I've explained, but the most important sustainability to us is based on the question: can we continue to give those kids shoes year after year?

TH: When you look out there into the world, what do you see that’s inspiring to you personally?

BM: Entrepreneurs. I'm always inspired by entrepreneurs, be they young, old, men, women, what country, doesn't matter. I love people who take risk, have ideas, and put it all on the line to make them come to life. And that really inspires me.
I think I get really inspired by just being around creative types, people who are maybe not entrepreneurs, or maybe not doing anything socially good, but artists and writers and musicians. Being around that is really great because it allows me to stop thinking so much about: ‘we have to get this done, or this deal has to get inked…’ And it allows me to get back into what I love the most, and that's just being creative.