TOMS Shoes turns consumerism on itself

When TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie(who was a contestant on The Amazing Race with his sister Paige) traveled though Argentina he was struck by the poverty rampant in the beautiful country. Specifically he was stuck by the fact that most of the impoverished went shoeless. Children running down streets littered with debris, barefoot. He wanted to do something about it. At the same time he fell in love with the traditional rope-soled Argentinian shoes called Alpargatas. So he started a shoe company. A company that, when it sells a pair of shoes, will ship another pair of shoes to a developing country where they are needed. To use their simple phrase: "one for one". To date, 60,000 pairs of shoes have been donated to Argentina and South Africa. The shoes come in a vast array of designs and have begun to offer exclusive web-only designs from artists like Tyler Ramsey and Gabe Lacktman. When contrasted with the image of sweatshop labor associated with the big shoe/sneaker manufacturers like Nike, this company seems that much more amazing.

(Thanks Meters!)

-Matt