Toms Shoes Buy One Give One
It would be wrong to say TOMS shoes invented the Buy-One-Give-One model when it hit the market in 2006, but students of purpose marketing would agree that it quickly became the best-known company associated with that form of embedded giving.
toms shoes buy one give one
Although the company was distributing a lot of free shoes with a network of nonprofit partners (over the lifetime of the program TOMS reported giving away more than 95 million pairs), critical articles appeared questioning the manner in which TOMS managed that enterprise. Common questions included whether TOMS hurt the footwear industries of nations where it gave away shoes; whether distribution partners were improperly requiring recipients to participate in other programs to be given shoes; or, cutting to the very core of the program, whether giving away shoes really made a difference in the lives of recipients.
By 2012-2013 it appeared that the company had caught up with many of the problems associated with trying to run such an enormous giving enterprise. A substantial team had been hired to work exclusively on giving and was conducting research to try to better understand how to improve their impact. For example, the company arranged for many shoes to be manufactured in the countries in which they were to be given away. TOMS shared information on its giving practices more freely. In fact, I was so impressed with their progress and achievements that Engage for Good, the organization I run, recognized TOMS with an award at our 2014 conference.
TOMS, of course, is an accessory company that markets itself like a charity: When you buy TOMS products, the company makes an in-kind donation to a person in need. When someone buys a pair of TOMS shoes in the US, for instance, the company donates a pair of shoes to a child in a poor country like Haiti.
TOMS has a compelling origin story. When founder Blake Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina in 2006, he "witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes." According to TOMS corporate lore, Mycoskie decided that there was a simple solution to that problem: Give them shoes. More specifically, create a for-profit company that funds free shoes for poor children without relying on donations.
On the surface, this idea makes sense. Shoes seem important! They protect your feet and are a basic requirement for participation in a lot of public life. Not having them sure sounds like a big problem. Getting free shoes sure sounds like a great solution.
And if they're relatively inexpensive items, like shoes that cost just a few dollars or menstrual pads that cost only pennies, then the story gets even better: We, as Western consumers, are so rich that the price of changing a poor person's life is just a rounding error on our fashionable accessories. Improving a poor child's well-being or clearing a young woman's path to education can be offered as a free gift with purchase, a sort of altruistic version of a McDonald's happy meal toy.
It might be easy to miss, but there are two really big logical leaps in the story that products like TOMS tell you: that the hardships the poor kids were facing were due to their lack of shoes, and that giving them shoes was therefore the best way to address those problems. Neither of these, unfortunately, is correct.
When TOMS worked with an outside research team to evaluate the impact of its shoe donations, the researchers were unable to find a way in which the shoes had much of a substantive impact on poor kids' lives. The kids liked the shoes, and used them to play outside a little more often. But there was no significant improvement in their school attendance or self-esteem.
Save the Children integrates shoe distributions into our larger health, nutrition, and education programs. To date, TOMS has given Save the Children over 1 million pairs of shoes and winter boots for children in Australia, China, El Salvador, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Tajikistan and the United States.
But businesses have gone way beyond sneakers these days. Many companies are now using the TOMS buy-one-give-one model to sell you everything from small items like toothbrushes and chewing gum (great stocking stuffers, by the way) to more expensive things like watches and sporting goods.
One for one (also known as "buy-one give-one") is a social entrepreneurship business model reputedly developed by Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes, in which one needed item is given away for each item purchased.[1]
The One for One business model is largely credited to TOMS Shoes. Founded by Blake Mycoskie in 2006, TOMS Shoes donates one pair of shoes to a child in a developing country for each pair sold to consumers.[2] Based on the success of TOMS Shoes, other companies began following the business model. Warby Parker began donating eyeglasses to people in need while companies like Soapbox Soaps and Two Degrees Food employ the model to help with poor hygiene and hunger.[2]
Shoe brands like TOMS promise to donate one pair of shoes for every pair purchased. To date, TOMS has distributed sixty million pairs of shoes, helping socially-conscious consumers purchase shoes and feel good about providing shoes to a child who needs them. The buy-one-get-one model has been widely embraced by consumers and businesses alike as an effective model for creating both commercial and social value.
The very success of TOMS has encouraged other entrepreneurs to adopt the buy-one-give-one model. Watch company WeWood plants a tree every time you buy a watch. Smile Squared sells and donates toothbrushes. Soapbox gives soap to a needy child with every purchase. Two Degrees Food does the same with food. Online marketplaces, such as Roozt and Given Goods, host hundreds of brands that use a buy-one-give-one model or something similar.
The buy-one-give-one model of business is associated with a lot of feel-good tactics. This business model allows consumers, who may feel disconnected from the problems of the developing world, to engage social problems while still purchasing for themselves. The buy-one-give-one model feels intuitively more human and tangible than most estranged corporate philanthropy. You can look down at your shoes and feel as though some needy child also has a pair thanks to your transaction.
The charity of TOMS seems like a win-win situation, a shining example of charitable capitalism. However, evidence of the dismal consequences of such business models will dismay you. Distribution of aid-in-kind gives economists and experts plenty about which to be very concerned. According to critics, handing out goods creates an inefficient allocation of aid-spending. We are giving things the poor neither want nor need. I may want a nice new pair of TOMS, but the money spent producing a second pair could be put to much better use feeding those who are hungry than providing them with a product identical to the third pair of shoes I own. An oversupply of unneeded resources can lead to a twisted game of white elephant. Developing communities become burdened by a flood of unwanted aid.
The researchers collected data on a wide array of outcomes: schooling attendance, general health, foot health, psychological impacts, and time allocation across an array of activities including schooling, homework, playtime, domestic chores, watching TV, eating and sleeping. They also asked recipients whether they actually wore the shoes and whether they liked them.
The results of the study presented positives and negatives for the TOMS business model. The good news was that 95% of the kids in El Salvador had a favorable impression of the shoes and wore them often: 77% of the children wore them at least 3 days per week, and the most common response by children was wearing them every day.
As for TOMS, the company has chosen to give shoes as rewards for children who join community building projects. In addition, TOMS hopes to see greater social good produced from their sunglasses program. For every pair of sunglasses bought, TOMS Eyewear provides a person in need with a full eye exam by trained medical professionals. Each patient then receives the treatment they need. Even Wydick is looking forward to this program for more life changing social change. However at the end of the day the perennial problem of the one for one shoes persists. The program is aimed at children who want shoes, but are unable to afford them. Footwear, besides being one of the first commodities offered in developing markets, is also one of the first things bought when families have access to money. For children who are too poor to afford shoes, other commodities (food, shelter, health care) would be more effective.
For the greater part of a decade, TOMS shoes have been a mainstay in regular footwear. Just like any other shoe, consumers have a variety of reasons for wearing them, including the feel of the canvas or cotton material, the unique comfort, or the company label. The niche the company occupies is its social value: For every pair of shoes purchased, one pair is donated to a rural neighborhood in a developing country. Since 2006, over 50 million pairs of shoes have been donated to communities in need.1
First, TOMS shoes serve more than 70 countries, and each of these countries has its own root poverty causes. Analysis of these factors and proper poverty reduction programs should be conducted at a grassroots level, best accomplished by NGOs rather than by multinational corporations like TOMS.
Vox.com is going after the TOMS "One for One" business model, in which the company donates one pair of shoes to children around the world for every pair of shoes sold. It's a tough take, calling the brand and other for-profit companies who have "similar buy one, give one" programs the "charitable equivalents of yes men" and suggesting that the message behind TOMS transforms an "ordinary shoe-buying experience...into a magical fairy tale." Vox.com's Amanda Taub describe writes:
Here's the evidence that shoe donations from TOMS might not be helping children in need: an outside research team reported that the shoes weren't making a noticeable difference in kids' lives, according to Vox.com. "The bad news is that there is no evidence that the shoes exhibit any kind of life-changing impact, except for potentially making them feel somewhat more reliant on external aid," professor Bruce Wydick wrote in a blog post this spring, after studying the TOMS shoe donation program in El Salvador. 041b061a72