When I first heard about the idea of one-for-one model, I believe it is meaningful and can actually make a difference in the rural areas. I bought my first pair of Toms with the feeling that I am helping the society. This famous model is now adopted by more companies. However, is this model really effective? Can this action help those poor kids in the long run?
Although it is good for Toms to focus on one-for-one model as a solution to poverty, the unintended consequence is huge. First, this action would undermine local shoes’ businesses, especially those medium to small-sized ones. People won’t buy any shoes if they can get free ones. Also, this model can create dependency, sap local initiative, and pleases developed world buyers of one-for-one products more than it actually helps combats poverty. Overall, Toms gets a successful marketing but without actually solving the root of poverty.
There is an old proverb in China, which is “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I think this just illustrate the key problem of one-for-one model. Yes, Toms is a shoe company but it doesn’t mean that Toms should only focus on providing shoes to make the world a better place. If a business really wants to take responsibility, it should focus on “teaching people how to fish” instead of just giving them the “fish”. Toms is not concerned about the deeper causes of poverty thus inhibiting long-term solutions.
On the contrary, SoleRebels is doing a great and innovative job. SoleRebels aims to provide jobs to Ethiopia citizens and pay excellent wages to their employees. It also provides medical coverage to its workers and their families. With extremely high and straight wages, medical coverage and free transportation, SoleRebels is actually building its own business model and giving incentives to the workers to work hard and get rid of poverty.
Compared these two Social Entrepreneur-ships, in my opinion, SoleRebels is actually solving the poverty problems by “teaching people how to fish” while Toms is just simply providing shoes to poor kids.