Buy one, donate one.

Although Toms shoes’ model of donating a pair of shoes for each pair bought by consumers seems like a good idea and does appeal to customers, the model is not sustainable. Buying a pair of shoes thinking that it would help another person makes the purchase seem like a good idea, which could be credited to good marketing. However, as mentioned in the article “The One-for-one Business Model: Avoiding Unintended Consequences“, the one for one model could actually have a detrimental impact. Though the business could be considered to be helping people directly, their actions are actually harming the society indirectly by taking away business opportunities that other citizens around the region are pursuing.

While businesses are moving towards implementing social impact into their core values, they would still need to consider their social actions carefully so as not to harm the community indirectly or in the long run, which makes their revised model more beneficial. Their new model of “selling coffee and giving away a week’s worth of clean water for every pound of coffee sold” would help grant incomes as well as a source of income to the area while developing the market, which would allow the community to be more sustainable and could help them address and tackle the roots of their problem: poverty.