How do you define creativity? What makes something creative? Many questions arise when something is labeled creative. When Blake Mycoskie came up with Toms shoes he was thinking of a creative way to put shoes on people of needs feet and make money at the same time. Toms shoes is a is a for profit organization that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need every time a consumer buys a pair. Toms shoes is considered creative because his idea is novel and appropriate as well as socially acceptable. The product started as a little c and over time became a big c. This is how Sawyer defines creativity. Over the course of this paper I will give you the background of Toms shoes and how it evolved from the little c to big c.
So one may ask what makes something creative? Creativity refers to when a person creates a product or a solution that is labeled as new and is valuable. The creator could label the product as new and then society or the person buying the product will label it as novel. Since not all creative people are alike it is hard to justify something creative. It is said that something has to be able to be repeated or tweeked in order to be creative. Things on the little c creativity scale is said to just imply basic functions whereas creative products on the big c level are up for Pulitzer and Nobel prize awards. You can see the difference between the two in that type of analogy.
Blake Mycoskie has always had dreams of starting his own businesses and building it up over time. As a student at Southern Methodist University, Blake started his own door to door laundry service. After a successful run at his own school he eventually spread it to seven other colleges. After the business boomed he sold it to his partner and continued on to his next venture. After finishing college Blake competed on the reality T.V show the Amazing Race with his sister Paige. Realizing how successful the reality T.V business was he decided to start his own show. Mycoskie started Reality 24/7 which was a show solely dedicated to reality news around the clock. During the time of the show he was able to raise two million dollars from business people and other reality show alums. The hype for the show was so high that Rupert Murdoch decided to start his own show which eventually caused Blake’s show to plummet. After this business Blake decided to start his own driving ed class. He worked with trafficdirect.com to start a new way to teach drivers ed which included cool videos and more hip instructors. It was during this job that Blake vacationed in South America where he first saw the Alpargata shoe. The Alpargata shoe is worn by Argentine farmers over the past 100 years that is a traditional rope soled shoe. It was at this time that Blake Mycoskie realized the poverty in South America and the amount of kids without shoes. This is where the idea of Toms shoes first popped up in Mycoskie’s head.
Kids in developing countries are forced to walk to school, go get clean water, or just play around all while wearing no shoes. This effects hundreds of millions of different children that are prone to injury, infection, and soil transmitted diseases. The problem with this is that when kids get these diseases they are not able to afford medical help. It has been said that healthy kids are more likely to succeed in school and life. When a child is healthy they are able to better our future. Podoconosias is the main disease that Blake Mycoskie noticed that really set his mind on his Toms Shoes idea. Podoconosias is a disease that affects the lymphatic system of the lower legs. This causes feet to swell up and affects the way people walk. The easiest solution to this problem is shoes. This is why Blake Mycoskie came back from Argentina with his idea of helping kids in need find shoes. Blake returned back from his vacation with 200 pairs of the Alpargata shoe. The first people he told his idea to were his ex girlfriends. Blake sat his last six girlfriends in the same room and told them about his idea. He showed them the shoes and they were immediately sold. Blake was able to sell his first six pairs within the first week he was back from his trip. This great idea Blake had was that for every pair of Toms shoes someone bought he would hand place a pair on a child in needs feet. This means that he and a crew would personally deliver the shoes to the kids that were in need of shoes. Mycoskie was able to get the money for this venture by selling his online driving ed business to start the organization as we know now as TOMS shoes. Known as the One for One movement, the business was launched in 2006 and within the first few months over 10,000 pairs of shoes were sold just out of his apartment in Californina. This is when Mycoskie realized that this was the business that he was going to actively pursue for a long time. Since then Blake has moved into a bigger studio and has 18 full time employees. His shoes are sold in over 500 different locations across the country. He has sold over a million pairs of shoes to date. His first trip to South America to deliver the shoes was filmed and is currently being made into a documentary to premier in the Sundance Movie Festival. A quote from Tom is “Inspired by a traditional Argentine shoe and challenged by the continent’s poverty and health issues, I created TOMS with a singular mission: To make life more comfortable. TOMS accomplishes this through its unique shoe and my commitment to match every pair purchased with a donated pair to a child in need... no complicated formulas, its simple... you buy a pair of TOMS and I give a pair to a child on your behalf.” TOMS shoes is a novel idea because it is unique in the way that for every pair of shoes bought he will hand place a pair on a child in need. “Because of its unique one-for-one philosophy, TOMS has benefited from tremendous media attention that has made traditional marketing unnecessary.” Mycoskie is able to help children and at the same time make money. This helps the business because Mycoskie does not have to focus more on fundraising like most charities because he was able to make a business out of donating at the same time. TOMS shoes can be worn by men, women, and children. The interesting part about it is that you can decorate your own shoe to fit your own style and personal. There are often TOMS shoe parties where people will come to decorate their shoes with many other people. So if we get back to the idea of being novel, TOMS shoes is new and appropriate because shoes are getting sold and at the same time helping someone out. Most businesses that are similar to Toms shoes is usually a non-profit organization idea but Toms shoes sets itself apart because it becomes a for-profit organization. Blake Mycoskie decided to make it a for-profit organization because the only investment into the company he has ever had is the 40 thousand dollars that he made from selling his online driving education company. If Blake wanted to continue his business he knew that he would have to be able to make money at the same time to keep the business up. They are able to make the business more sustainable and have been able to help 680 thousand different kids. One Day Without Shoes is an event put on by Toms Shoes where they organize a day where people that join will not wear shoes for the day. The day is put on to make people aware of the how it is for life for people that have do not have the choice to wear shoes everyday like we do. Millions join in every year to help the cause. This is a novel idea because there is an interesting idea behind the whole process where everyone involved does not where shoes and when people see them barefoot your first thought is to ask why they are not wearing shoes. This helps promote helping kids in need and Toms shoes at the same time. On this day many shoes are bought in the process and in return more shoes are sent overseas to help children. So how did TOMS shoes become popular? As almost everything these days TOMS shoes started its popularity on Facebook. The group for TOMS shoes reached 10,000 people within its first year of existence. Once the gift application started on facebook people started giving out TOMS shoes icons out as gifts to inform people of what TOMS shoes was all about. After the buzz started going around youtube videos started to be created. Different videos were being made by fans as well as documented trips of when TOMS shoes would go and hand place the shoes on children’s feet. Once word got out that TOMS shoes were in demand stores started to take notice and eventually 300 stores would start selling the shoes. This helped because before the only way to get a pair would be online but now people can go to into many different retail stores and find TOMS shoes. People started to realize that a simple step of buying a pair of shoes could drastically change a life. Many ads stared to premier on tv and newspaper and magazine companies started to put their own ads out to promote changing life.