LOGO

 

For a few years I have been following a company called TOMS. Until recently TOMS was only known for manufacturing shoes. It was founded in 2006 by a former Amazing Race contestant Blake Mycoskie. But what makes this brand noteworthy is its One for One model: For every shoe purchased, a pair of shoes is given to a child in need.  More than one million shoes have been donated to date to children all around the world.

Recently TOMS introduced TOMS Eyewear. The goal is to help the nearly 284 million people suffering with blindness or visual impairment. When you buy a pair of Toms glasses, you guarantee sight for one person in the form of medical treatment, prescription glasses or sight saving surgery.

TOMS is not a charity. It is a for-profit company. And as such, it has its critics. In a recent blog post Kelsey Timmerman, author of Where am I Wearing?: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes, points out that TOMS isn’t tackling the real underlying problem of poverty. He raises questions related to the real value TOMS is creating and notes that “The problem isn’t shoelessness. The problem is poverty”.

The question is: Are TOMS shoes helping or is their One for One policy just a PR stunt to generate profit? They certainly have mastered the art of generating buzz with PR, but doesn’t that apply to so many other charitable causes? Isn’t PR in part what social entrepreneurship is all about, i.e. raising awareness about a problem and generating profits while doing so? How much of a donation to any given charity goes to a cause vs. what goes into overhead?

Although my father says my two pairs of TOMS are “the ugliest pair of shoes he has ever seen”, I quite like them – and not just because they look good. Before TOMS came a long, I wasn’t so aware that the lack of shoes in developing countries was such a problem. TOMS generates a profit. But they also donate heaps to charity. Surely that can only be a benefit – both for the recipients and for their brand.

Brand Regard is an online digital asset management solution that makes it easy to organise, find and share your marketing material. You can get started with a 30-day free trial in under 5 minutes.