[6] Founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, an entrepreneur from Arlington, Texas,[7][8][9] the company designs and markets shoes as well as eyewear, coffee, apparel and handbags.
Mycoskie offered to help and has cited the shoe distribution experience, and the many shoeless children he encountered, as the birth of his idea for his eventual company.
[12] He decided to develop a type of alpargata (a simple canvas slip-on shoe that is popular in Argentina)[13] for the North American market, with the goal of providing a new pair of free shoes to youth of Argentina and other developing nations for every pair sold.
[15] Upon returning to the U.S., Mycoskie told the online driver education company that he was running for $500,000 to finance Toms Shoes.
The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at the University of New Mexico has described the company as an example of social entrepreneurship.
Mycoskie said he would use half of the proceeds from the sale to start a new fund to support socially minded entrepreneurship, and Bain would match his investment and continue the company's one-for-one policy.
[31] The countries involved have included Argentina, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Rwanda, South Africa and the United States.
The company uses word-of-mouth advocacy for much of its sales, centering its business focus on corporate social responsibility.
Part of this model originally involved a non-profit arm called "Friends of Toms" that recruited volunteers to help in the shoe distributions in foreign countries.
[38] Toms responded to this criticism by moving 40% of its supply chain for shoe donation to countries they actively give in.
Author Daniel H. Pink described the company's business model as "expressly built for purpose maximization", whereby Toms is selling both shoes and its ideal.
He also commented on Toms' expansion into eyewear in order to help the nearly 300 million people who are visually impaired in developing nations.
For example, in Ethiopia the shoes are intended to help prevent a soil-borne disease that attacks the lymphatic system and which largely affected women and children.
"[50][51] Shoes have been given to children in 70 countries worldwide, including the United States, Argentina, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti and South Africa.
According to garment-industry author Kelsey Timmerman, many people he spoke to in Ethiopia were critical of the company, saying that they felt it exploited the idea of Ethiopian poverty as a marketing tool.
In July 2011, Toms founder Blake Mycoskie participated in an event sponsored by the group Focus on the Family.
[71][72] After being criticized for supporting a socially conservative non-profit, Mycoskie posted an apology on his website stating that he and his handlers had not heard of Focus on the Family before participating in the event and decided it was a mistake.