Citizenship Stage 2

1. Citizenship stage
2
Social Entrepreneur-
Blake Mycoskie & Tom Shoes

2. Definition of a Social Entrepreneur
• A social entrepreneur is a person who establishes an enterprise with the
aim of solving social problems or effecting social change

3. Blake Mycoskie
• Born in Arlington in 1976, August 26, Texas to an orthopedic surgeon and
author
• Left SMU after getting an Achilles Tendon injury which ended his career
and launched his first business, EZ laundry
• Employed more than 40 people, servicing 3 universities and generating
close to $1 million in sales
• Sold company to partner in 1999

4. Shoes
• Mycoskie visited Argentina on vacation in 2006
• Met an American woman who was part of volunteer organisation that
provides shoes for children in need
• Witnessed effects of being shoeless
• Felt inspired and returned to America and founded Shoes for Better
Tomorrows
• Later shortened to TOMS

5. TOMS
• In 2007, TOMS launched an annual “One Day Without Shoes” event to
raise awareness for TOMs’ mission for clothing impoverished children
• Partners for this event include AOL, Flickrs and Discovery Channel
• By 2012 over 2 million new pair of shoes had been given to children in
developing countries around the world
• Unique ‘One for one’ business model

6. 1 for 1 concept
• He went around sharing his idea with local shoemakers with the intention
of wanting them to collaborate with them.
• Most of the shoemakers called them loco and didn’t want to work with
them.
• They finally found a local shoemaker named Jose who was willing to work
with them.
• For the next few weeks, he went to Jose’s factory which was a room no
bigger than the average American garage, with a few old machines and
limited materials

7. 1 for 1 concept (continued)
• Soon, he started collaborating with some other artisans, all working out
of dusty places outfitted with just one or two machines for stitching the
fabric and the little bits and pieces of fabric
• He worked with the artisans to get 250 samples made, which he stuffed
into 3 duffel bags.

8. Taking it to the streets
• didn’t know much about fashion or things related to footwear business
• decided to dine with some of his best female friends, and told them
about his story of idea of wanting to help people
• friends loved the story, and gave him a list of stores they thought might
be interested in selling his product
• One saturday, he went to one of the top stores called American Rag and
talked to this woman who judges shoes more than you can imagine
• the woman loved the story as much as the shoe and decided to work
with him.

9. Taking it to the streets
• One day he woke up and saw that he had 900 orders on his website, but
the bad news was that he only had 160 pairs of shoes at his apartment at
that moment of time
• He posted an ad on Craigslist and soon selected three candidates to work
with him

10. Influence
• TOMs’ 1 for 1 business model has inspired many different companies to
adopt similar concepts
• Warby Parker (estb 2010) gives a pair of glasses to someone in need for
every pair of glasses they sell
• Ruby Cup gives 1 menstrual cup to a girl in Kenya for every menstrual cup
sold
• A Bristol Chiropractic company donates 1£ for every appointment
attended

11. Impact
• Influence
• The needy get’s to receive new shoes
• Compared to the shoe drive where it relied completely on donations, this
model was better
• Shoe drives had little control over the supply of their shoes
• Even when shoes came in sufficient quantities, the sizes were often
wrong
• Many children were left barefoot after drop-offs

12. Credits
1. ww.entrepreneur.com/article/220350
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toms_Shoes
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Mycoskie

13. Thank you!