98 FASTC0MPANY.

COM JUL
, Blake Mycoskie
i set out to save
:»v-world by giving
way half his goods.
His critics say that
Jiving alone doesn't
solve a thing.

ByJeffChu
Photographs
by Mike Piscitelli

Toms founder and

CEO Blake Mycoskie
UPE DIEM.
Ifs a bit surprising îo see îhaî Blake
Mycoskierepeaîediy Invokes such
a hoary old seif-help slogan, But there
¡tisjnfoot-high.woodenletterson
an upstairs landing at the Los Angeles
headquarters of his shoe and acces-
so.rlescompanyJons.Thereitis
again, in a painting on the wall of his
office/man oave.Andyouli find hlrti
repeating it severai times In his book,
Stan Something Jhat Mattets.
If there's anyone who can make a case for
seizing the day, it's Mycoskie. He has done'it
repeatedly and successfully over the past seven
years, orchestrating Toms's rise into the top
night of fashion and establishing it as a new
kind of business. More than any other brand,
Toms has integrated old-fashioned, for-profit
entrepreneurship with new-wave, bleeding-
heart philanthropy, bonding moneymaking
and giving in an unprecedented manner. The
company has become so closely identified with
giving away a pair of shoes to a poor child for
every pair sold—Toms has trademarked the
tagline "one for one"—that it's often mistaken
for a charity And it has spawned buy-one-give-
one copycats offering everything from dog
treats to cups of coffee.
This spring, Toms gave away its 10 millionth
pair of shoes. "Within the next 18 to 24 months,"
Mycoslde says, "we expect we'll have given away
100 FASTC0MPAIMY.COM JULY/AUGUST 2013
10 million more." It now also sells sunglasses-
more than 150,000 pairs in the past two years—
and in turn has helped deliver eye care to more
than 150,000 people. Toms currently donates
shoes in 59 countries and eye care in 13. The
figures add up to remarkable growth for a re-
markable company, one that has put shoes on
the feet of many poor children, made its owner
a very rich man, and pioneered a much-admired
business model. "I had no idea it would ever get
this big," says Mycoskie, a 36-year-old Texan
whose laid-back, surfer-dude vibe masks the
ambition of an entrepreneur who prefers to talk
less about the company he has built than of the
movement he is building. "Now that we've
grown, it's all about: How do you use these re-
sources to do even more?"
Mycoskie says the one-for-one model could
involve much more than your feet and your
eyes—he envisions a Toms empire that encom-
passes all sorts of everyday products. But what
many of his critics would like him to talk about
instead—and what, during two long interviews
with Fast Company, he discussed publicly at
length for the first time—are Toms's failings on
the giving side and its plans to change its ways.
You could sum that up with a different Latin
phrase: Mea culpa.
There's an old Dutch proverh that says
"Shoemaker, stick to thy last"—an admonition
PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN FANTL
 to go with what you lcnow. But what ifyou never
knew much about anything, including how to
make shoes?
Mycoskie has never been conventional. The
son of an orthopedic surgeon and a cookbook
author, he confesses that he never graduated
from high school (he didn't fulfill his Spanish
requirement) but managed to attend Southern
Methodist University anyway; he then dropped
out after two years as a philosophy and busi-
ness major. He started a laundry company,
a billboard company, and an online driver-
training company before he hit upon Toms,
and says that he has never known anything
about any of the businesses he has gotten into.
"When you don't know the rules, you break
them all," he tells me when I meet him in his
L.A. office in early April. "It's hard to take big
risks when you know the history of an indus-
try and what has worked and what didn't."
For several years he lived on a boat, until he
got married last summer and his wife. Heather,
forced the issue. And while he loves to read
business books—John Mackey's Conscious Cap-
italism is a recent favorite—he also revels in
talking about Plato, Socrates, and Kierkegaard
and in reflecting on the existential questions
of his purpose in life. 'Anytime I see a book like
that," he says, "I buy it."
The reading can only have helped. Mycoskie
is a brilliant storyteller and a charismatic, mas-
terful marketer—one of his staff says that Toms's
secret "is Blake's gut"—and in some ways, the
Toms genesis story has been the company's most
lucrative product. Mycoskie was traveling in
Argentina in 2006, playing polo and drinking
wine, when he met a woman who was collecting
shoes for the poor. Startled that in the 2ist cen-
tury so many kids still needed shoes, he decided
to start a shoe company that would give a pair
away for every one it sold. His first product: a
variation of the traditional Argentine shoe that
he brought home from his trip, the rope-soled,
canvas-topped alpargata.
With $5,000 saved from his earlier ventures,
Mycoskie set up shop in his Venice apartment.
It was chaos. Liza Doppelt, the second person
Toms hired, recalls that when she arrived for
With his deep tan, untamed mess of curly
brown hair, and sometimes-questionable
hygiene, Mycoskie appears almost feral.
102 FASTC0MPANY.COM JULY/AUCUST 2013
TOMS'S
BRAIN TRUST
Mycoskie's rule-breaking
philosophy pervades
Toms—not least in the
hiring of an eclectic staff
you wouldn't expect to
find in top jobs at a shoe
company. From left: Liza
Doppelt, a former tech
publicist, became em-
ployee No. 2 in 2006 and
now heads marketing for
Toms eyewear. Social
media director Caitlin Co-
ble was an intern at Nylon
magazine when Mycoskie
hired her to lead social
media in 2008. Creative
director Anya Farquhar
worked as a designer at
TBWA and BMW Design-
works. Chief people offi-
cer Amy Thompson has
had one of the more con-
ventional careers, previ-
ously working in HR at
Starbucks, Ticketmaster,
and Citysearch.
her interview, "I had to physically move dirty
laundry from the armchair I was told to sit
on." When Garett Awad showed up for his in-
ternship interview a couple of months later, he
found boxes and shoes everywhere. "It was
totally insane," he says, "and I thought. Yes, this
is exactly what I want." (Doppelt is now VP of
marketing for eyewear, while Awad heads
retail marketing.)
Despite the mess behind the scenes, the com-
bination of a slightly exotic yet still approachable
shoe and a do-gooder story proved alchemical,
establishing the brand's popularity with taste-
makers in fashion, lifestyle, and entertainmenL
Booth Moore, the ios Angeles Times's fashion
critic, was the first to write about Toms, in May
2006. Then the editors at Vogue featured Toms
in its October 2006 issue, naming legendary
designer Karl Lagerfeld as an early-adopting fan.
The shoes themselves did not always work
as well as the story. The first pairs of Toms—the
name stands for tomorrow's shoes—were made
in Argentina, but Mycoskie quickly realized
that producing in China would be more cost-
effective. As a supply-chain novice, he didn't
send anyone to supervise production there. "If
you don't show that you care, they assume you
don't care," says Jonathan Jung, Toms's first
hire. "Every single pair was defective in some
way—glue stains, mismatched shoes, insoles
that were too big for that shoe." Mycoskie, Jung,
and a crew hired via Craigslist worked crazy-
long hours to salvage what they could, cleaning
stains, matching pairs, pulling out insoles and
recutting them to fit. (Jung is now director of
supply-chain planning for Toms.)
Another early Mycoskie mistake nearly cost
the company its account with Nordstrom,
which today is Toms's biggest retailer. "I was
adamant I didn't want the environmental waste
of cardboard boxes," he says. "I wanted organic
linen bags with drawstrings. It meant less
money spent on shipping. It was eco-friendly"
It was also salesperson-unfriendly Finding the
right sizes amid the messy piles of linen bags
took too long, and the drawstrings were forever
entangling. Sales tanked. Toms went back to
conventional boxes.
For someone who has quickly built a for-
midable fashion-and-lifestyle brand, Mycoskie
has never been much of a fashion guy. His
look could be described as sentimental neo-
hippie. He always wears a thatch of bracelets
and a tangle of necklaces, accessorized by sto-
ries; one faded, pinkish woven-fabric strip
around his wrist was a gift from a young boy
on the first shoe drop in Argentina, while his
string of brown prayer beads comes from an
Indian ashram he and Heather visited during
their honeymoon.
When we went to lunch one day, he wore
a blousy, shiftlike top he had picked up in
Nepal, shorts in a Native American print that
he thought were Polo Ralph Lauren, and a
pair of camouflage-print Toms. With his deep
tan, untamed mess of curly brown hair, and
sometimes-questionable hygiene, he appears
almost feral. (By all accounts, he has been sig-
nificantly cleaner since he married. Heather
told me that her wedding vows included a
pledge to "love him regardless of how many
times he showers or whether he brushes his
teeth on a daily basis.")
That don't-care-too-much sensibility fits
well with what Toms sells. It's not so much
shilling tangible, sartorial accessories (shoes,
sunglasses) as offering ineffable, emotional
ones—an aura of goodwill, a sense that one is
doing something positive with that consumer
dollar. "We're about empowering people, inspir-
ing people, helping them to see the life they
could live differently," says Awad, the retail
C O N T I N U E D ON PACE 110

Illllllilll

Like Tons, makers of everything from scrubs

to doggie treats are seeking to Durnish their image
hy giving away their wares.
Figs Scrubs roiet to donate 1.5 million
• For every set of scrubs balls by 2015.
sold, donates a set to a health
care professional In need. Bobs by Skechers
• 1,500 sets donated in
Kenya, Haiti, Ecuador,
Honduras, Botswana, and
5 • Donates a pair of shoes
for every pair sold.
• More than 4 million pairs
South Sudan. donated in over 25 countries.

f% TWO Degrees f\ The Company Store

á For every natural vegan

health bar sold, donates
one to a hungry child.
r% * For every comforter
\ß sold, donates one to a
child in need.
» More than 820,000 meals • 16,735 comforters donat-
donated in partnership ed last year in 33 states.
withAOL, HP, and Cisco.

7
Warby Parker

3
Dog for Dog
• For every dog treat sold,
donates a Dogsbar to a
shelter in the country of sale.
» 54,000 dogs gratified.
• For every pair of glasses
sold, gives a pair (or funding)
to not-for-profit Vision Spring,
which sells them at subsidized
prices and trains low-income
entrepreneurs to provide
vision care.

4
One World Fútbol
• For every soccer ball sold, • 250,000 pairs given.
donates one to organizations
working with disadvantaged
communities.
• 325,000 soccer balls
distributed in 160 countries;
pledge from sponsor Chev-

PHOTOCRAPH BY JUSTIN FANTL


Toms
C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAGE 1 0 3
marketing head. "We've changed the way
people think about consumption."
If that sounds a tad grandiose and self-
righteous—the rhetorical opposite of the
humble alpargata—it's also completely conso-
nant with the way we live and market today.
Toms has identified like-minded, high-profile
influencers, partnering with Charlize Theron
and Ben Affleck, who collaborate on limited-
edition lines and appear at Toms events to pro-
mote the brand and their own causes. And it
has heavily courted young, trendsetting actors
and musicians, such as Olivia Wilde and Passion
Pit hoping that they'll be photographed in and
tweet about their Toms. (The company says these
unofficial brand ambassadors occasionally re-
ceive free products but are never paid.)
The Toms story has also been magnetic to
big corporations, which have integrated the
brand into major ad campaigns and saved Toms
the expense of advertising. After an ad exec saw
an item about Toms on a video screen in the
back of a New York taxicab, Mycoskie and Toms
were featured in TV commercials for AT&T. Mi-
crosoft, American Greetings, and AOL have
promoted Toms in digital campaigns.
All this publicity has helped Toms become
more than a small business very quickly The
company, which is wholly owned by Mycoskie,
does not release revenue or profit figures. But
Mycoskie did tell me that the average retail
price for a pair of Toms is $55, and that about
30% of its revenues come from direct-to-
consumer sales via Toms.com. Its giveaway
projections—a trailing indicator of sales, since
Toms aims to distribute its "giving" pairs within
six months of a consumer's purchase—indicate
that it expects to sell at least 7 million pairs of
shoes this year. A little back-of-the-envelope
math gives a conservative revenue estimate of
nearly $250 million in 2013, but an inside source
suggests that the figure will surpass $300 mil-
lion (including sunglasses).
The hard part? "Giving, man," Mycoskie says
with a shake of his head. "Giving is hard."
110 FASTC0MPANY.COM JULY/AUGUST 2013
Toms's powerful marketing, its good inten-
tions, and the potential of its model to do enor-
mous good inspire widespread praise. Lane
Wood, a not-for-profit consultant who has
worked with Charity: water, the well-digging
NGO that is one of Toms's partners, credits Toms
with helping companies mature beyond basic
corporate social responsibility. "People have
seen the success of Toms and said, 'How do I
get a piece ofthat?' " he says. "While you've seen
some really disingenuous campaigns, what I'm
excited about is that this will become ubiqui-
tous. Companies have to understand the effect
they have on the world."
Yale professor Dean Karlan, who has done
groundbreaking research on poverty allevia-
tion, seems cautiously optimistic about what
Toms has achieved—and what it could yet ac-
complish. "Toms has a tremendous vehicle for
figuring out how to do this right" he says. "It's
a neat idea. I love the passion. But show us the
impact, because it takes more than passion to
do good."
Here is where the critics chime in. Laura
Seay, a professor at Morehouse College, argues
that by giving away millions of pairs of shoes,
Toms is "just treating one symptom of a much
deeper problem, and treating symptoms is not
a cure." She adds that Toms's model is built on
what's known in trade as dumping. "It under-
mines the local economy," she says. "The shoe
seller goes out of business. He can't send his
kids to school."
Others say Toms addresses the wrong issue.
Scott Gilmore, the executive director of the not-
for-profit Peace Dividend Trust which works to
boost local economies in post-conflict countries,
says the problem of persistent poverty is "not a
"Toms is just treating
one symptom
of a much deeper
problem," says
Laura Seay, a
professor at
Morehouse College,
"and treating
symptoms is not
a cure."
lack of shoes, but a lack of opportunity and a
lack of jobs." While he concedes that Toms has
helped to build awareness of poverty, he argues
that its success really shows the power of mon-
etizing white guilt "How can we make ourselves
feel better?" he asks. "This is the power of self-
congratulatory smugness, of saying, 'I'm better
than you because I'm helping somebody' But
the people who lose out are ironically the ones
they say they're trying to help."
Such criticisms aren't new. They've been
growing in number and vehemence—especially
on the Internet—in lockstep with the popular-
ity of Toms shoes. But Toms has declined for
years to address its critics publicly giving the
impression that it is ignoring them. Mycoskie
explains that he has chosen not to engage, in
large part because most of the grievances have
been broadcast online: "It's a debate you can't
win in that medium." He expresses doubt that
many of Toms's detractors genuinely want dia-
logue, and fears "that they'll just take that one
sentence out of context."
Privately Mycoslde claims, he has been seek-
ing out constructive criticism for several years.
"I've asked people, 'What could Toms do bet-
ter?' " he says. "I've learned that the keys to
poverty alleviation are education and jobs. And
we now have the resources to put investment
behind this. Maybe five years from now, we'll
be able to say it's really good for business. But
the motivator now is. How can we have more
impact? At the end of the day, if we can create
jobs and do one-for-one, that's the holy grail."
Toward that end, the company has sought
to improve the effectiveness of its work
throughout the supply chain. All of Toms's
consumer shoes today are made in China, as
are the vast majority of its giveaway shoes (a
small number of which are distributed there).
"Toms would not be what it is today without
China," says Toms president Laurent Potdevin.
"We wouldn't have the resources we have now
It has been the easiest, most cost-effective
place to make shoes."
Three years ago, Toms began to make give-
away shoes in Ethiopia, which has a small but
burgeoning shoemaldng sector. Within the next
couple of years, it expects to add shoemaking
in India, Kenya, and Haiti, where an artist col-
lective is already customizing Chinese-made
Toms for a limited-edition line. Potdevin em-
phasizes the challenges of such ventures: "Get-
ting a factory up and running, retention, train-
ing, finding local management—every aspect
is more difficult in a place like Haiti." But
separately, Jung, the supply chain chief, notes
that it's not all altruism and sacrifice. "Let's not
lie to each other," he says. "If you're creating
product for the local market, you're spending
less to distribute it. No sea freight. No duties."
Staying local is especially important in Africa;
Ethiopia and Kenya both belong to a free-trade
zone that includes nearly every African country
where Toms shoes are given away
Head of giving Sebastian Fries adds that
Toms is upgrading the quality of its manufactur-
ing jobs. He rattles off a list of improvements:
higher wages; tutoring for workers' children;
company-provided take-home meals for work-
ing moms; financial education; an on-site pre-
school at a Kenyan factory where Toms hopes
to begin production later this year. "The jobs we
help create," he says, "should be in line with
what Toms stands for."
At the other end of the business, Toms has
lately decided that it ought to learn whether its
giveaways work. In August, researchers from
the University of San Francisco are expected to
release results of a two-year study, funded by a
$225,000 Toms grant, of giveaways in El Salva-
dor. Fries, who in 2011 was hired away from
Pfizer, where he had been devising products for
consumers in low-income markets, says that
more such research is planned.
Most of the data the company has gathered
so far is anecdotal. Fries has pushed his team
to act on the findings anyway Toms is working
with giving partners to integrate shoe drops
into health and education programs; in Malawi,
for instance, the respected NGO Partners in
Health uses shoes to coax parents to bring chil-
dren to clinics for checkups. It's targeting areas
of clearer need; with Save the Children, Toms
will give 100,000 pairs of shoes this year to dis-
placed Syrians at the massive Zaatari refugee
camp in Jordan. And in response to a common
critique that the giveaway shoes don't always
meet children's needs, this fall, Toms will begin
distributing a winter boot in Afghanistan, India,
Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.
But as usual, Toms's impromptu ways might
have hurt the effort a little; when it came time
to test prototypes, winter was already over. "We
found someone in Los Angeles to make artificial
snow and ice," Fries explains. "People walked
in it for about four hours to make sure they
would hold up. But we should have tested it in
the winter months."
The question is whether the quality ofToms's
giving is as high a priority as the quantity When
the company advertised last summer for a new
director of impact assessment, the job's main
responsibility was described as "the building
of a body of evidence that illuminates and sup-
ports the positive and compelling role of all
"I've learned that
the keys to poverty
alleviation are
education and jobs,"
says Mycoskie.
"And we now have
the resources to put
behind this."
aspects of Toms's giving strategy" What hap-
pens, though, if the evidence is not entirely
positive or particularly compelling?
In those exhilarating six months after
Mycoskie returned from Argentina with his
story and his samples, Toms sold 10,000 pairs
of shoes, and in the fall of 2006, he went back
to the country for the first round of giveaways,
which took place mostly in Misiones, a north-
eastern province near the Brazilian border. The
company has returned multiple times since
then to give away more shoes. Without Toms's
knowledge. Fast Company recently went to sev-
eral Misiones communities to see what, if any,
lasting effects those giveaways have had.
The economy in Andresito revolves largely
around the yerba tree, whose leaves are dried
to make yerba mate, the strong tea that Argen-
tines drink constantly. The sprawling munici-
pality, hacked from virgin jungle just 40 years
ago, is dotted with pockets of poverty From the
sleepy town center—there's just one restaurant
and one guesthouse, catering mostly to passing
truckers—you have to bump along red dirt roads
for 40 hilly kilometers, past orchards and pas-
tures and fields of mandioca, to reach School
No. 436, one of the first that the Toms team
visited in 2006.
That visit, says school director Sergio Dario
Gonzalez, "was a gift from heaven." Typically,
the only foreigners who come through Misiones
are en route to Iguazú Falls, one of the seven
wonders of the natural world, on the Argentine-
Brazilian border. "They pass by in cars and buses,
some take photos of the school, and then leave,"
Gonzalez says. "But this was real interaction."
After distributing the shoes, some volunteers
played basketball and soccer with the kids, whue
others sang, danced, and played other games.
The fleet of motorcycles parked outside
indicates the region's improving fortunes—five
years ago, most students came to school either
on horseback or on foot, but today, many of the
landowners' kids arrive by "moto." One of the
most important, if unexpected, functions of
the shoe drops tugs in the opposite direction
ofthat richer-kid fleet: the erasure of a visible
sign of income inequality. "It was really great
to have these students next to each other with
the same shoes—as equals," Gonzalez says.
"The kid of the tobacco farmer had the same
shoes as a kid whose mom can't always feed
her kids. That was powerful. It was really a
special moment for the kids, especially for their
self-esteem." Adds Fabiana Ramos, a sixth-
grade teacher: "At the time, it was really the
only shoe that many of these kids had." Though
most pairs lasted no more than three months,
some of the students, she recalls, "washed and
dried them until they broke." Those shoes lasted
six or eight months.
About a four-and-a-half-hour drive south
of Andresito, in the even poorer municipality
of San Pedro, Toms has given away more than
20,000 pairs of shoes since 2006. In a destitute
San Pedro village called Alacrin, where the
population is entirely indigenous Guarani,
r e s i d e n t s have become d e p e n d e n t on
donations—not just shoes but also clothes and
school supplies. Toms's gifts were very welcome.
Alacrin's rudimentary one-room schoolhouse,
cobbled together from wood and scrap metal,
bursts with chatty, smiling kids of all ages,
many of whom go barefoot even in winter.
"Mothers in need ask for two basic things for
their kids: milk and shoes," says Mirta Allgayer,
a San Pedro civil servant who helped coordinate
visits by Toms in 2006,2008, and 2010. "These
are the basics. Especially in families with seven,
eight, nine children."
Toms's legacy in Misiones is measurable in
smiles, tears, and memories. Celia Romero, the
head of School No. 341, which got a shoe drop
in 2006, was moved as she recalled the Toms
visit. "It was more than a gift," she says. "There
are kids here who come to school with their toes
sticking out of their shoes. The families came
to watch and be part of it. It was very exciting.
Everyone was happy" Allgayer, who still gets
choked up at her memories of the shoe drops,
says, "It was amazing to see the faces of these
kids when they see someone giving them a gift
one time in their life. The kids said, 'Someone
is going to give me something?' "
But Toms's giveaways haven't been as trans-
formative as the company might have liked.
CONTINUED ON PACE 112
JULY/AUGUST 2013 FASTC0MPANY.COM 111
 Toms
C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAGE 111
Though much of Misiones has grown rapidly
in recent years, the improvement is mainly
an outcome of the generous, vote-stoking sub-
sidies of Argentine president Cristina Fernán-
dez de Kirchner's populist government. Many
of the shoes Toms distributed at the seven
Misiones schools that Fast Company visited
went to children who would not be considered
poor; according to Clara Alicira Hirschfeld,
director of the 370-student School No. 144 in
San Pedro, all of her kids have always had
shoes. ("But it was so much fun," she says,
"like a party.") And in Misiones's poorest vil-
lages, like Alacrin, a shoe drop once every two
years can't keep kids shod for long. The region's
soil—rocky, red-stained, and prone to glooping
into sole-sucking mud during winter rains—is
devastating to the alpargatas' already limited
life expectancy. Of the dozens of people inter-
viewed throughout Misiones, only two said
they still had hand-me-down pairs of Toms in
use, rare survivors from the 2010 shoe drop.
(The company now prefers to call the distribu-
tions "giving trips.")
Yet the giveaways don't appear to have dam-
aged local businesses as much as the critics
said they would, either. An hour's drive south
of San Pedro, the El Gato alpargata factory
makes shoes for all of Misiones Province. Owner
Graciela Mabel Katz claims never to have heard
of Toms, but thinks the shoe drops haven't hurt
sales. El Gato produces 800 pairs of alpargatas
daily—a child-size pair goes for about $3
retail—and sells out every two weeks. "They're
seen as something accessible for people with
little money," she says.
Gladys Pitsch, who runs a shoe shop in
Andresito, also has seen little harm from the
giveaways. "Alpargatas aren't really shoes,"
she says. "It might have been different if
Toms had given out waterproof shoes or long-
lasting ones."
A few weeks after visiting Toms head-
quarters, I flew to Austin, where Blake and
Heather Mycoskie moved last year. He still
typically spends a couple of days a week in
L.A., but living in Texas has given him the
space to think bigger and more strategically.
He invited me to join him for a walk around
Town Lake, the waterway that bisects central
Austin, and he was in a more philosophical
mood than when I'd seen him in California.
Even his speech seemed a little slower.
To Mycoskie, Toms will be a failure if we
112 FASTC0MPANY.COM JULY/AUGUST 2013
keep appending the word shoes to the company
name, because he's thinking much bigger
and for the long term. Even now, if you type
tomsshoes.com into your browser, you'll be
redirected to toms.com.
One of Mycoskie's business heroes is Rich-
ard Branson, and he sees a model in the Brit-
ish mogul's unprecedented propagation of the
Virgin brand. "Nobody has done that like he
has," Mycoskie says. "Here's my hypothesis:
In the 1960s and 1970s, when Richard was
starting, he tapped into an energy and attitude
that was countercultural and irreverent and
disruptive. He started with music, which was
perfect, and once the customer knew what the
Virgin brand stood for and trusted it, he was
able to take that same attitude into all differ-
ent industries, and today, kids who listened
to music from Virgin Megastores are flying
his business class."
Toms-wearing teens and twentysomethings
are, in Mycoskie's vision, today's equivalent
of the Virgin kids of the 1970s and 1980s.
"They're buying clothing that's organic. They're
giving up their birthdays to raise money for
Charity: water. They're shopping at farmers'
markets. And they wear Toms," he says. "We
started with shoes. Now we're doing eyewear.
We're taking them along this path where they
can integrate giving."
Mycoskie is mulling three or four categories
for Toms's expansion, and the next could launch
as early as the fourth quarter of 2013. "I want to
show people that one-for-one is not just for the
lifestyle-fashion space," he says. "It can even be
everyday products."
Though he won't say what industries or
categories he is eyeing, a search of the 200-plus
domain names that Mycoskie LLC, Toms's par-
ent company, has registered over the past few
years suggests that he is considering every-
thing from wine (tomswine.com) to event
ticketing (tomsticket.com, tickettogive.com)
to financial services (tomscreditcard.com,
tomsinvesting.com, tomsmortgage.com, toms
studentloans.com).
In March, a lawyer acting on Mycoskie's
behalf also filed a trademark application for
the tagline "You drink, we dig," which may
indicate that the company could expand its
partnership with Charity: water, the not-for-
profit founded by Mycoskie's good friend Scott
Harrison. The lawyer also sought an expansion
of Toms's existing trademark "One for One,"
to cover "beers; mineral and aerated waters
and other nonalcoholic beverages; fruit bever-
ages and fruit juices; syrups and other prepa-
rations for making beverages."
There's a scene in Alel<sandr Solzhenitsyn's
novel Cancer Ward in which the patients stumble
across "What Men Live By," a short story by Leo
Tolstoy, another author Mycoskie has read and
admired. The story is about a poor shoemaker
who takes a naked beggar into his home. The
beggar, who becomes the shoemalœr's assistant,
is eventually revealed to be a fallen angel. Before
the angel can regain his wings, he must learn
lessons about mankind, including the answer to
the question. What do men live by?
When one of the Cancer Ward characters
poses this question, his friends offer divergent
answers: air, water, and food; "their rations";
"by their ideological principles"; "professional
skill." In the Tolstoy short story the right answer •
was "love"—which some of the novel's men find
foreign, unsatisfying, even unacceptable. "No,"
one says dismissively, "that's nothing to do with
our sort of morality"
If you ask, what does Toms live by?, the re-
actions will be similarly divergent. The model
that Mycoskie pioneered, the mistakes he has
made in execution, the profits he has reaped,
the good he has done—all these will be read and
received in different ways by different people.
At times, Mycoskie seems at once embold-
ened and bewildered by his success—and by
people's reactions to it. "I had no experience in
fashion," he says as we walk around the lake. "I
had no experience in shoes. I had no experience
being a public figure. I had no experience in
giving. I had no experience in development. I
never even read a book by Jeff Sachs!" He does
appreciate some of the criticism. "Toms will
never be a perfect company Sometimes as en-
trepreneurs, we thinlc of things and we sell them
to ourselves. But I've learned so much along the
way, and we want to think in a more holistic
way about our impact."
I ask if the burden—of being Mr. Toms, of
trying to do something unprecedented—some-
times feels like too much, and he reflects for a
moment before answering. "The responsibility
can at times feel exhausting, and some days I
don't want it. There are definitely times I say,
'Is it even worth it?'" He smiles and then quicldy
adds: "But I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry
for me." I feel the pace quicken just a bit. "I'm
going to say this as humbly as I can: I believe
what we're doing is affecting the way businesses
will be built for hundreds of years to come," he
says. "You stay true to what you believe, and
what your message is, and then you let the chips
fall where they fall." 9
ReportingftomArgentina by Jessica Weiss
chu@fastcompany.com
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