TOMS Shoes (and an Iowa City adventure)

I bought my first pair of TOMS shoes this weekend. The best part – it took me on my first Iowa City adventure.

 

I was surprised at the way the downtown was hopin’ for a non-college Saturday. I asked if it was move-in weekend, but the guy at the shoe store told me it wasn’t, and “you should see a Saturday when college is going on”.

There were kids playing at the splash pad and playground, and people plucking away on the public pianos on the Ped Mall. The restaurants had people on the patios enjoying a warm August afternoon and the shops had their doors open inviting us all in to their cool air conditioned goodness.

It was also fun to see the KWWL bureau in Iowa City. And the guys are so lucky they have windows!

Now back to the shoes, they’re so comfy! I had heard of TOMS shoes before, but got an in-depth look at the Global Leadership Summit earlier this month. The company’s founder Blake Mycoskie explained how his business is making a difference. If you haven’t heard of TOMS shoes yet, it’s really a cool company with an awesome “One for One” business model. For every pair of shoes bought, one is given to a child in need (in a developing country). For more info, here’s the website.  As of April, they’ve given away more than 600,000 pairs of shoes.

They’ve also started an annual “Day Without Shoes”… and if you know me well, you know as much as I love my shoes, I love to be barefoot! You can be sure April 5th 2011, I’ll be sporting the barefoot look!

Ok, I’m not trying to sell shoes, just share a cool idea. What if every business adopted a similar “One for One” model ? What a cool world that could become…