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# If the shoe fits, donate it
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/if-the-shoe-fits-donate-it/
- Published: 2008-01-02T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T22:57:13.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: local, Santa Monica, #archive-import

OLYMPIC BOULEVARD It was a life-changing moment for Blake Mycoskie.

The young entrepreneur was on vacation in Argentina, learning to play polo, when he looked around and noticed the feet of the children in the impoverished villages on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, wandering around shoeless, their feet scraped and scarred.

“I grew up in a middle-class family in Texas and never -----experienced that myself,” Mycoskie said last Thursday of his 2005 excursion to the South American country. “It hit me hard and I felt there was this big injustice, I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t at least afford shoes because they have to walk a long way to get fresh water.”

Then an idea came to him that night — what if he could start a company where every time a customer purchased a pair of shoes, a free pair would be donated to a child in need?

That idea was transformed into TOMS, a Santa Monica-based “shoe gooder”company whose motto is “shoes for tomorrow,” where every pair sold in stores means that a shoeless child somewhere in the world will have something comfortable on their feet to wear. TOMS is short for the “tomorrow” part of Mycoskie’s company motto.

The 31-year-old entrepreneur had launched several small start-ups, including an online drivers education course, before he founded TOMS in his small condo in Playa Vista with a modestly-sized staff. As business grew and word spread of the TOMS mission, the company’s operations were moved to the Santa Monica Studios on Olympic Boulevard. Mycoskie has also transplanted from his Playa Vista condo and now lives on a sailboat in Marina del Rey.

The shoes are sold in more than 300 department stores and boutiques across the globe, including six in Santa Monica.

Following that fateful night when he came up with the idea to start the TOMS shoe company, Mycoskie — the runner-up in “The Amazing Race” in 2002 with sister, Paige — spent another month in Argentina, designing a shoe inexpensive enough to be able to absorb the cost of giving away a pair for free with each purchase.

The result was a slip-on heel-less shoe, made out of materials like canvas and burlap, modeled after the traditional Argentinean alpargata.

Commonly referred to as just “TOMS,” the shoes have been designed to appeal to an American audience, some available in simple black, white and beige colors, others in more eccentric hues.

“It’s really great for wearing a shoe when you could be wearing a flip-flop but want something covering the foot,” Mycoskie said.

The slip-ons have been featured prominently in fashion magazines and celebrity tabloids, capturing shots of actresses like Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson fashioning a pair of red or black TOMS.

Since the company began selling the footwear in May 2006, Mycoskie has already gone on two different “shoe drops” in which he gave away more than 60,000 pairs of TOMS — 10,000 pairs in Argentina in October 2006 and 50,000 pairs in South Africa in November. This week, Mycoskie is in Argentina giving away another 5,000 pairs of TOMS and the next trip is planned for Ethiopia this summer. A team of about 20 volunteers and company employees participate in every delivery and hand place the shoe on each child’s foot, ensuring the slip-on is the right size.

“A lot of these kids are AIDS orphans and to sit there and hold and hug them and put a shoe on their feet, that memory is going to be left with that kid forever, even after the shoes are gone,” Mycoskie said.

The shoes are produced in facilities in Argentina, Brazil and China and a non-profit arm of the company, called “Friends of TOMS,” organizes the shoe drops, identifying locations where there is a need.

“It was a real adventure learning how to make shoes down there, especially if you don’t know how to speak Spanish,” Mycoskie said.

Among the employees that took part in the South Africa shoe drop last year was Liza de la Torre, a self-professed “shoe gooder” who handles marketing for the company.

It was during that trip that the TOMS team ran into a customer who had purchased a pair of the shoes in a boutique in the San Francisco Bay Area. Though the customer had known about the TOMS mission, they were surprised to actually witness it in person, de la Torre said last Friday.

“It was amazing... to be able to go and give away shoes and see the whole process come full circle,” de la Torre said.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/010208-08_01.jpg)

WEARING THEIR HEARTS ON THEIR FEET: (Top) Mike Hammer (right) and Jonathan Jung (left) work on shipments at TOM’s main office in Santa Monica last week. (Photo: Photos by Brandon Wise)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 2, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/010208.pdf?ref=smdp.com)