Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes in 2006, creating a compassionate and revolutionary business model: One for One.
Blake Mycoskie
Blake Mycoskie is the Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS Shoes, and the man behind the growing One for One movement. As of April 2010, TOMS has given over 1,000,000 pairs of new shoes to children in need through giving partners around the world.
It didn’t take long for the world to notice this new approach to business – in 2007, only a year after its beginning, TOMS Shoes was honored with the prestigious People’s Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. And two years after that, TOMS and Blake Mycoskie were the proud recipients of the Secretary of State’s 2009 Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) presented by Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. The award celebrates companies’ commitment to corporate social responsibility, innovation, exemplary practices, and democratic values worldwide.
While running TOMS, Blake is a sought-after speaker at campuses and conferences all over the country. He is passionate about inspiring young people to help make tomorrow better, encouraging them to include giving in everything they do, from business practices to day-to-day decisions. His hope is to see a future full of socially minded businesses, and consumers.
This unique vision for the future came into focus in 2006, when he witnessed the hardships facing children growing up barefoot in Argentina. He felt a need to help, and the One for One movement was born. He returned the following year with friends and family to hand-place 10,000 pairs of new shoes on children.
Blake has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, starting five businesses before TOMS. His first was a successful national campus laundry service, which he later sold. Between business ventures, Blake competed in the CBS primetime series, The Amazing Race. With his sister, Paige, Blake traveled the world and came within minutes of winning the $1 million dollar grand prize.
Blake is an avid reader and traveler. He is 33-years-old and lives on a sailboat in Los Angeles. A favorite quote of his by Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
About the project
Walking is the primary mode of transportation in the third world and a child's daily walk to get clean water or to go to school can be miles. All odds were against him... he had no experience in the fashion or shoe industries; no one was willing to invest in his project; factories, shoe and fabric makers told him it would be impossible. Everyone told him he was crazy to give a pair of shoes away every time he sold a pair, and that he would never make a profit. Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS Shoes in 2006, creating a compassionate and revolutionary business model: One for One.
TOMS Shoes
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.
Entrepreneurs create products, services and jobs. They expand economies, improve people's lives, provide employment (high and rising wages) and bring about competition. A competitive environment, in turn, gives rise to efficiency, meritocracy and further innovations and entrepreneurial drive.
The potent combination of entrepreneurship and technological innovation can forge an environment that is conducive to further enterprise, involving even government policy in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.
