Target Audience: Corporate Foundations; Social Entrepreneur wannabes; and their customers
“Adam Ruins Everything” is worth a re-watch now and then. It’s a fun way to digest complex topics. I was just trying to explain why I don’t like TOMS Shoes and decided to send this video to them instead.
Some key critiques of the original buy-one give one (aka BOGO) model and other similar ones:
- Shoes don’t address root causes of poverty. In fact, TOMS was accused of being complicit in a business model that relies on poverty.
- Free shoes compete with local businesses
- Canvas shoes – not great on muddy roads, or in the rain or snow, or on hills
- One size fits, for now. What happens when kids grow out of them?
- The founder is not named Tom
- And perhaps most trivially, it bugs me that it isn’t “Buy two, give two”
If you prefer to read, I’ve compiled more articles below.
Read more on this topic
2021 How TOMS Tweaked Its Purpose Without Losing Its Power
2019 Purpose At Work: How TOMS Is Evolving Its Brand To Scale Its Impact
2015 The One-for-one Business Model: Avoiding Unintended Consequences
2015 Buying TOMS shoes is a terrible way to help poor people
2013 Peanut Gallery: TOMS ‘One Day Without Shoes’ Coupon **If you like questionable marketing, this one is a hoot! In 2007, TOMS launched ‘One Day Without Shoes’, an annual awareness campaign in which participants go shoeless for a day to gain support for those in need. [TOMS no longer supports this, probably after New Yorkers got worms from walking barefoot on city streets.]
2012 Toms Shoes: a Doomed Vanity Project?
