TOMS: the One for One model
A for-profit giving model that tests the line between social value and social change.
- Sector
- Footwear and accessories
- Source
- Week 4 tutorial video
The case in brief
The Week 4 tutorial uses a video about TOMS to explain social entrepreneurship. Background: TOMS is a for-profit company founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie after a trip to Argentina, where he met many children without shoes. Its “One for One” model promised a pair of free shoes to a child in need for every pair sold.
The model was criticised by people in international development who argued that it made consumers feel good rather than addressing the underlying causes of poverty. In its 2019 Impact Report the company announced it would decouple its impact from One for One and expand its giving to include impact grants.
Key facts
- Founder
- Blake Mycoskie
- Founded
- 2006, Los Angeles
- Legal form
- For-profit company
- Model
- One for One: a free pair of shoes for every pair sold
- Change of model
- 2019: moved away from One for One towards impact grants
Analysis through module theory
Martin & Osberg (2007)
Giving shoes is direct action within the existing system: it creates social value but not a new equilibrium. On this reading TOMS sits closer to social service provision than to social entrepreneurship.
Creative destruction list
The innovation is chiefly a new funding model: customers finance the giving through their purchase, and the giving drives the brand.
Discussion questions
- 1.Does TOMS pass Dees’s (1998) test of social improvement over profit?
- 2.What would TOMS have had to change to create a new equilibrium rather than social value?
Takeaways
- A social motive in marketing does not by itself make a venture social entrepreneurship.
- Criticism of TOMS illustrates why the module asks whether a venture addresses causes (systems) or symptoms (events).