Over the years, more and more brands have shifted their focus to sustainability and humanity. One great example of this is the brand Toms, a company that is known for marketing its shoes. In 2006, the founder of Toms, Blake Mycoskie had a goal to provide a new pair of free shoes to the youth in developing countries after witnessing many shoeless children wandering around the streets of Argentina. Mycoskie explains that the company name sparked from the word “tomorrow”, in which it evolved from a previous concept initially called the “Shoes for Tomorrow Project”.
Toms advertises themselves by explaining that they invest ⅓ of their profits into grassroots efforts. In translation, they aim to focus on organizations catalyzing change at the “local level while driving progress from the ground up”. Specifically, grassroots good is the result of a community coming together to fix and address an issue surrounding environmental, social, or cultural problems to then spark further change. Toms aspirates to engage with equity versus equality because it takes into account individual circumstances, in turn providing lower-income people with the resources they truly need.
Not only does the company create two-way partnerships but they build meaningful relationships with their partners and they have developed a Giving Advisory Council that includes advisors from many different communities such as the LGBTQ+ community and communities of color. In addition, Toms gears their brand to focus on sustainability by revisiting areas of the business at hand to initiate improvements that benefit the community and planet.
By 2012 over 2 million pairs of Toms shoes had been given to children in developing countries. Now, in 2021, the brand scored in the top 5% in the community category, gaining the power of becoming a certified B corporation and showing that Toms met the “highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability”. Here, it is clear that Toms is a brand for the people, only looking to make the world better. If more fashion-based brands move their focus on fixing social, environmental, and cultural issues, the fashion industry will continue to succeed.
I think this was an interesting post and shows how companies can be more ethical, while also making money. I think transparency and knowing where their profits go should be very important to consumers.
Tom's is an awesome company that helps give shoes to those in need around the globe. But can there be some unseen affects by this? The answer to this is yes. I recently had watched a document that discussed out subsidies like the Tom's shoes has negative affects on local economies in under developed countries. When they discussed Tom's they stated how they destroyed the shoe making economy in Africa because local shoe makes could not compete with the free high quality shoes made by Tom's. They should give free shoes but also we invest in the local economy.