In 2006, Blake Mycoskie decided to take a trip to Argentina. He was 29, had four start-ups under his belt, including a reality TV show he had made with his sister a few years earlier, and felt the need to take a break from it all. The idea was to spend some time immersed in Argentine culture, and forget all about work. So, he hopped on a plane to Argentina, and quickly began to enjoy everything the local culture had to offer, such as tango, polo, and Malbec. He also fell in love with the alpargata, a typical Argentinian shoe, made of soft canvas. Alpargatas (very similar to the Spanish espadrille) are canvas shoes with a rope woven sole that are so versatile they can be worn anywhere: in the city, in the country, and even in nightclubs.
Towards the end of his stay, Blake met an American woman who was part of a volunteer organisation that provided shoes for children in need. The woman explained to him that many children, especially those who live outside the nicer areas of Buenos Aires, are so poor that they don't even own a pair of shoes. Mycoskie spent several days travelling from village to village with the group, as well as exploring a bit on his own. He witnessed the intense pockets of poverty just outside the bustling capital, and it gave him a real shock. Of course, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that poor children around the world often went barefoot, but there, for the first time, he saw the real effects of being literally shoeless: the blisters, the sores, the infections. Blake knew he had to do something, but what?
Opening another charity didn’t seem to make sense. The problem was so extensive that it could not be solved with donations alone. What’s more, the donations were often lost because the sizes of the donated shoes did not match the sizes of the children who needed them. A more methodical system was needed. And this is how the TOMS project – an acronym for Tomorrow's Shoes – was brought to life. The idea was to create a shoe company that could adapt the classic Argentine alpargata to appeal to the American market and, for every pair sold, a pair would be donated to needy children. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Not only is the story behind TOMS simple, but it is also very powerful because it didn’t take long for Blake Mycoskie to find the right partners and: boom! The TOMS launch was an unprecedented success. Everyone wanted a pair: from his own neighbours to Hollywood celebrities. The success, however, was not what struck Blake the most; the thing that had the biggest impact on him was when he returned to Argentina with the first load of 10,000 shoes, and went personally from village to village to hand them out. “Pure joy” is how the TOMS founder described what he felt. He experienced a feeling of contentment and well-being that he had never felt before.
