Many people have heralded Tom's Shoes, the company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell to "normal" consumers, as a good example of a business with both a social and profit goal. Certainly, the philanthropic nature of Tom's Shoes is laudable. But I feel like the company focuses on its social mission to the detriment of actually making high-quality shoes. Or at least it appears that way. For, even after spending a good twenty minutes perusing their website, I couldn't find a single page that took the time to explain why their product is something I might actually want to buy for my own enjoyment and utility, not just the utility of others.

Who would buy a pair of shoes for him or herself exclusively to help the impoverished? It makes no sense. The fact that a potential Tom's Shoes customer expects to receive a pair of shoes for herself implies that she intends to gain something from the transaction other than the "warm glow" of having given an impoverished Argentinian a pair of shoes. If all she cared about were the social good created, she ought simply donate her money to a charity.

It seems exceedingly idiotic for me to spend $70 on a pair of Tom's Shoes that are uncomfortable, not especially durable or likely to have manufacturing defects. If I never wear the shoes, I've wasted the labor and human capital inputs of the designers, marketers and managers, and the materials inputs that go into making what amounts to a pound of refuse. Not to mention I would probably go buy another pair of high-quality shoes, since I'm not a member of the barefoot movement. (Perhaps from Tod's, whose name differs by one letter, but whose ethos is perhaps the antithesis of Tom's. It's a coincidence I find amusing.)

Contrast the Tom's Shoes model to the Whole Foods model. I don't shop at Whole Foods purely because they have a philanthropic bent. I shop there because they provide superior quality foodstuffs for my various culinary concoctions, and because they staff their stores with people who don't look nonplussed and scowl when asked for directions to the lemongrass. Yet they do manage to effect quite a bit of social good — certainly more than any ineptly managed, naïve, idealistic nonprofit ever could.

I don't particularly mind companies that sacrifice some profit for social good. But I do have a problem with companies that don't produce products worth buying.