Toms uses Instagram to give away a million shoes

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Nine years ago Tuesday, a Los Angeleno named Ben Katz bought the first pair of shoes sold by Toms, the e-commerce company that made waves by instituting a buy-one-pair and give-one-away policy. It has since been copied by other retailers building social good into their business models.

To help celebrate the company's anniversary, founder Blake Mycoskie is giving away a pair of shoes to a needy child each time someone posts a photo to Instagram of bare feet with the hashtag #withoutshoes. The promotion ends May 21, or when the company gives away a million shoes via non-governmental organizations such as Unicef and Save the Children.

"By leveraging Instagram, we can really make this a participatory event globally," says Mycoskie, 38, phoning from Berlin while on a trip to boost the 25% of business that Toms does outside of the U.S. "This isn't just about advocacy and giving based on your buying. It's about real giving for giving's sake."

Almost since the company's inception, it has held a One Day Without Shoes campaign to remind shoppers of its mission to shoe the shoeless. To date, some 38 million pairs of Toms shoes have been given away in 65 countries. "About 40% of the shoes we give away are made in the countries where we're doing the donating," says Mycoskie, who has started factories in Haiti, Kenya and India.

Toms shoes are made of canvas and cost between $48 and $78. Mycoskie says the business model works because of the traditionally high margins in the footwear business. Those margins help many big brands pay for ad campaigns, celebrity spokespeople and branded shops, whereas Toms uses them to donate free samples.

With a growing number of consumers gravitating toward companies that have social good as part of their mission, a company such as Los Angeles-based Toms has been able to capture market share with its do-gooder approach. Last summer, investment firm Bain Capital thought enough of Mycoskie's company that it agreed to buy half of it, valuing Toms in the process at around $625 million.

With Bain Capital's capital, Mycoskie says the mission is to aggressively expand its presence in markets such as Canada, the Middle East and South Korea, "where people have a particular interest in being both fashionable and charitable."

Mycoskie laughs when asked if it feels good to have created a business model — and in fact, business trend — that is anchored to giving away as much as he sells.

"It's more than a feel-good thing, it's a dream to have come this far after getting an email message saying that Ben had bought our very first pair of shoes all those years ago," he says. "To scale something like this in order to help more people is an incredible opportunity, and one that couldn't have happened just a few years ago. Social media is what makes Toms possible. Spreading the word between people who care is so easy now."