SXSWORLD

Blake Mycoskie: Shoes Do Help Make The Man–and Change the World by Carlo Longino " ... I decided to start a business, a for-profit shoe company, where every time we sell one, we give one away." completely dependent on donations and maybe not the most sus- tainable thing to start. So I decided to start a business, a for-profit shoe company, where every time we sell one, we give one away." Shoes are something we tend to take for granted. We probably TOMS shoes founder, Blake Mycoskie I Amazing Race in 2002. Four years later, Mycoskie set out for Argentina in order to revisit some of the places he had seen while competing on the show. While there, he was struck by the sight of hundreds of poor kids without shoes and decided to tackle the problem. Mycoskie sold an online drivers' education company he had started. as a lawyer, stockbroker or some other high-paying career, Mycoskie chose to become the face of a growing movement called social entre- preneurship that uses business skills and for-profit enterprises to create social benefits. Mycoskie's story really gets going after his appearance on The With the money he made from that deal, he could have donated 40,000 pairs of shoes to kids, but instead, he used the money to start TOMS Shoes with its "One for One" premise: for every pair of shoes TOMS sells, it donates a pair to a child in need. "I didn't want to start just another charity," Mycoskie said in an interview with Silicon Prairie News. "I felt that a charity would be 26 SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2011 then dropped out after a laundry business he founded took off. After starting another successful business, he was a reality TV star on CBS' The Amazing Race, falling just four minutes short of winning the grand prize, then parlayed this experience into a venture to start a reality television network. And of course, there are his Hollywood looks and million-dollar smile. But instead of coasting on his background and upbringing into a job t is easy to dismiss Blake Mycoskie as one of the lucky ones. He was raised in an affluent suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, got a tennis scholarship to attend Southern Methodist University, thropic success depends on its business success. Still it has created a paradigm that embraces both consumerism and social conscious- ness, giving shoe buyers a way to contribute by simply buying a pair of shoes. And the model works: as of last September, the company has given more than one million pairs of new shoes to needy children around the world. "Just as our environment is necessitating us to be more environmen- tally sound in our business decisions and practices, I think it's the same thing with just caring for your neighbor," Mycoskie explains. "I think the newness of [social entrepreneurship] is going to wear off a little bit, I think … it's going to be integrated into a lot more companies' programs. It may not necessarily be 'one for one,' but there will be a lot more cause-and-effect marketing, and I think that's a good thing." Technology plays a big role in TOMS' success. The company eschews traditional marketing efforts, which Mycoskie says can account for 20 percent of a shoe company's gross margin, and relies heavily on social media, word-of-mouth marketing and a distributed group of teams on college campuses to help get its message out. "We're able to save a lot of money, where other shoe companies cial strength or high-level connections of other philanthropists like Bill Gates or Bill Clinton. Yet, by leveraging the strength of a successful business and accepting a trade-off of reduced (but not eliminated) profits for social gain, he is able to multiply his response beyond anything he could achieve on his own. TOMS is clear that it is a for-profit business, and its philan- are spending money on advertising, and spend that same amount of margin to make another pair of shoes," he told CNBC. "So we can actually give away a pair of shoes for every pair we sell and make it make financial sense." n Blake Mycoskie will be the SXSW Interactive Festival keynote speaker on Tuesday, March 15 at 2pm. Check sxsw.com/interactive for more information. worry a lot more about fashion than very basic functionality, giving little thought to the fundamental health benefits shoes deliver. But soil-transmitted diseases like hookworm and podo- coniosis (a disease caused by constant contact with volcanic soil) still ravage the poorest parts of the world and, along with other foot injuries and infections, create a significant barrier for young people. Clearly Mycoskie has taken on a big task without the finan- THE LAVIN AGENCY

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