The Dave Matthews Band is headlining the TOMS Shoes Vagabond Tour 2009 to help meet the company’s goal of giving away 300,000 pairs of shoes in 2009. As TOMS founder and Chief Shoe Giver Blake Mycoskie wrote on his blog, “It’s so neat to have one of the most influential, progressive, forward-thinking, change-making bands in American culture supporting the TOMS One for One mission. It’s just amazing. We hope to soon see millions of Dave Matthews Band fans sporting TOMS and becoming part of this movement with us!”
Many children growing up in poor regions have no shoes. As a result they’re exposed to the leading cause of disease in developing countries—soil-dwelling parasites that slip into the body through cuts or sores on the feet. Wearing shoes can prevent this and reduce the risk of amputation and death. Children without shoes also don’t get to school, since most schools require them. A child without shoes is a child whose world is a lot smaller and more dangerous than it should be.
Enter TOMS Shoes, which has given away over 140,000 of its hip little canvas shoes since Mycoskie founded the company in 2006 after befriending some children in Argentina and realizing they had no shoes. The TOMS business model is simple—for every pair of shoes a customer buys, TOMS gives away a pair to a child who needs them.
Mycoskie told Business Week in January: "My thinking was that TOMS would show that entrepreneurs no longer had to choose between earning money or making a difference in the world. I wanted to prove that conscious capitalism is a viable business model for innovators worldwide, and entrepreneurs can focus on being ambassadors of humanity.” What do you think?
Click here for the tour schedule. DMB will be selling special TOMS toward the end of the tour. Check the TOMS blog for more details.
Debra is the lead singer/guitarist for Devi, “a ferocious guitar-driven power trio equally adept at sprawling psychedelic jams and terse, haunting three-minute rockers." (Lucid Culture)