What is the role of the individual in entrepreneurial ventures such as TOMS? thi

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What is the role of the individual in entrepreneurial ventures such as TOMS?

this is the case study. but doesnt answer my question.

In 2006 I took some day without work from work to journey to Argentina. I used to be twenty-nine years ancient and jogging my fourth entrepreneurial startup: a web-based driver's schooling application for teenagers. We have been at a critical second within the trade's progress, however I had promised myself a vacation and wasn't going to again out. Argentina was once some of the nations my sister, Paige, and i had sprinted through in 2002 at the same time we had been competing on the CBS reality application The robust Race. (As fate would have it, after thirty-one days of racing all over the world, we misplaced the million-greenback prize with the aid of just four minutes; it is taken me a at the same time to be equipped to position these phrases together without weeping.)

once I lower back to Argentina, my major mission used to be to lose myself in its culture. I spent my days studying the country wide dance (the tango), enjoying the country wide game (polo), and, of path, drinking the country wide wine (Malbec). I also got used to sporting the countrywide shoe: the alpargata, a tender, casual canvas shoe worn by just about all people in the nation. I saw this extremely versatile shoe all over: within the cities, on the farms, and within the nightclubs. An notion started to form behind my mind: maybe the alpargata would have some market enchantment in the us. However as with many half-shaped strategies that came to me, I tabled it for the second. My time in Argentina was imagined to be about enjoyable, now not work.

Seeing a necessity
towards the top of my travel, I met an American woman in a café who used to be volunteering on a shoe drive -- a brand new concept to me. She defined that many youngsters lacked shoes, even in quite good-developed countries like Argentina, an absence that didn't just complicate each aspect of their lives -- including essentials like attending college and getting water from the regional good -- but in addition exposed them to a broad variety of illnesses. Her organization accumulated footwear from donors and gave them to kids in want -- however mockingly the donations that furnished the institution have been also its Achilles' heel. Their entire dependence on donations meant that they had little control over their deliver of shoes. And even when donations did are available enough portions, they were mainly now not in the correct sizes, which supposed that the various youngsters had been left barefoot even after the shoe drop-offs. It was once heartbreaking.

I spent just a few days journeying from village to village with the girl and her group, and some extra traveling on my own, witnessing the extreme pockets of poverty simply external the bustling capital. It dramatically heightened my consciousness. Sure, I knew somewhere at the back of my mind that negative children all over the world more commonly went barefoot, however now, for the primary time, I saw the real effects of being shoeless: the blisters, the sores, the infections.

Name to motion
My first idea used to be to my possess shoe-based charity, however alternatively of soliciting shoe donations, i might ask pals and household to donate cash to purchase the right kind of shoes for these kids on a general foundation. I've a big loved ones and tons of acquaintances, nevertheless it wasn't tough to see that my private contacts could dry up in the end. After which what? These youngsters wanted greater than occasional shoe donations from strangers.

Then i began to appear for options on the planet I already knew: business and entrepreneurship. An concept hit me: Why no longer create a for-profit trade to help provide sneakers for these kids? Why now not give you a solution that assured a regular waft of shoes, not just each time kind individuals were able to make a donation? In different phrases, probably the answer was in entrepreneurship, not charity.

I felt excited and energized and shared these feelings with Alejo, my Argentinian polo teacher and buddy: "i'm going to start a shoe corporation that makes a brand new variety of alpargata. And for every pair I sell, i'll provide a pair of latest shoes to a child in need. There shall be no percentages and no formulation."

It was a easy idea: promote a pair of shoes today, supply a pair of footwear the following day. Something about the inspiration felt so right, even though I had no expertise, and even connections, in the shoe trade. I did have one thing that came to me practically right away: a name for my new company. I known as it TOMS. I would been playing around with the phrase "sneakers for a better the following day," which ultimately grew to become "the next day to come's shoes," then TOMS. (Now you recognize why my name is Blake but my shoes are TOMS. It is not about a man or woman. It's a couple of promise -- a better tomorrow.)

I asked Alejo if he would join the mission, seeing that I depended on him implicitly and, of path, I would need a translator. Alejo jumped on the possibility to support his individuals, and all of a sudden we have been a team.

Relocating forward
We started out working out of Alejo's household barn, after we weren't off assembly neighborhood shoemakers in hopes of finding any one who would work with us. We described to them exactly what we wanted: a shoe like the alpargata, made for the American market. It might be extra cozy and long lasting than the Argentine version, but additionally more enjoyable and stylish, for the fashion-aware American consumer.

Many of the shoemakers referred to as us loco and refused to work with us, for the difficult-to-argue-with cause that we had little or no idea of what we had been speakme about. However subsequently we observed any one loopy ample to suppose: a nearby shoemaker named Jose. For the following couple of weeks, Alejo and i traveled hours over unpaved and pothole-crammed roads to get to Jose's "factory" -- a room no higher than the normal American storage, with a couple of historic machines and limited materials.

Soon we started participating with every other artisans, all understanding of dusty rooms outfitted with one or two historical machines for stitching the material and littered with bits and portions of material, surrounded through roosters, burros, and iguanas. These persons had been making the equal footwear the same method for generations, in order that they looked at my designs -- and me -- with comprehensible suspicion.

Alejo and i worked with these artisans to get 250 samples made, which I stuffed into three duffel bags.

Taking It to the Streets
soon I was once back in la with my duffel baggage of modified alpargatas. Now I had to figure out what to do with them. I still did not know so much about trend, or retail, or shoes, or whatever with regards to the sneakers trade. So I asked a few of my best feminine buddies to dinner and told them the story: my go back and forth to Argentina, the shoe drive, and, sooner or later, my concept for TOMS.

Luckily, my associates adored the story, loved the proposal of TOMS, and cherished the shoes. In addition they gave me a record of shops they idea probably serious about promoting my product. Excellent, all of them left my condominium that night time sporting pairs they'd insisted on purchasing from me. A excellent signal -- and a good lesson: you don't invariably need to speak with gurus; regularly the client, who simply possibly a buddy or acquaintance, is your first-class advisor.

By then I had long past again to working at my current company, the motive force's education trade, so I did not have a fine deal of time to devote to hawking sneakers. To start with I suggestion that wouldn't matter and that I could get the whole thing performed via electronic mail and cell calls in my spare time.

That proposal obtained me nowhere. One of the most first of many predominant classes I realized alongside the way in which: no matter how handy it is for us to reach out to men and women remotely, usually the predominant task is to show up in character.

So one Saturday I packed up some shoes in my duffel bag and went to American Rag, some of the high shops on the list my pals had compiled, and requested for the shoe customer. Every month this lady noticed, and judged, more shoes than which you could suppose -- definitely extra shoes than American Rag might ever in all probability stock. But from the establishing, she realized that TOMS used to be greater than just a shoe. It was a narrative. And the purchaser adored the story as much because the shoe -- and knew she would sell each of them.

TOMS now had a retail patron.

A different enormous break adopted soon in a while. Booth Moore, the fashion writer for the la instances, heard about our story, cherished it -- and the shoes -- and promised to jot down an article. One Saturday morning now not long after, I aroused from sleep to see the entrance web page of the times' Calendar section: It used to be sales space Moore's story. TOMS was once headlines! We already had 900 orders on the website. By way of the end of the day, we'd got 2,200.

That was the good news. The unhealthy information used to be that we had handiest about a hundred and sixty pairs of footwear left sitting in my condominium. On the internet site we had promised every person 4-day supply. What might we do?

Craigslist to the rescue. I rapidly posted an ad for interns and soon I had selected three quality candidates, who began working with me right away. One in every of them, Jonathan, a younger man with a Mohawk haircut, spent his time calling or emailing the individuals who had ordered shoes to let them recognize their orders weren't coming anytime soon, seeing that we did not have any inventory -- in fact, they would need to wait as long as eight weeks before we had more. And but only one person out of those 2,200 initial orders canceled, and that was once considering she was leaving for a semester abroad.

Hollywood's Stamp of Approval
Now I needed to return to Argentina to make extra sneakers. In the meantime, again residence, publicity saved growing because the LA times article sparked more protection. The next gigantic hit came when Vogue journal made up our minds to do a range on TOMS, although I doubt they knew our enterprise consisted of three interns and me working out of my apartment. In the magazine, our forty-buck canvas flats have been being featured subsequent to Manolo Blahnik stilettos that offered for ten times as a lot. After Vogue, different magazines, akin to Time, persons, Elle, and even Teen Vogue, wrote us up. In the meantime, our retail consumer base used to be increasing past the brand new la shops to comprise national powerhouses similar to Nordstrom and concrete Outfitters. Quickly, celebrities like Keira Knightley, Scarlett Johansson, and Tobey Maguire have been noticed around town carrying TOMS.

We ended up selling 10,000 pairs of footwear that first summer -- all out of my Venice condominium, a fact we needed to cover from my landlady because I wasn't in any respect unique that my hire allowed for running a shoe manufacturer out of my dwelling room. She was anything of an oddball and would every now and then walk into the condo unannounced. Luckily, her vehicle had a terrible muffler that announced her presence from a block away. Every time any individual heard that racket, we might participate in an extreme cleanup and the entire interns would conceal in my bedroom; when she confirmed up, there was no sign that a full-fledged business was being run out of a residential condo. Frequently we might even keep drills just to make sure we would clean the whole thing up within a few minutes.

Explanation / Answer

Answer: The vision and mission of an individual plays a crucial role in the success and development of any entrepreneurial venture. As it can be seen in this case that how a person just travelling in another country was able to identify a unique and innovative business opportunity which resulted in the formation of TOMS. It was again the missionary approach and vision that the narrator of this story was able to develop an idea into a real business and then was able to scale it up to a great position were the brand ended up selling 10000 pairs of shoes in a single season. This case explains that how the entrepreneur qualities like vision, motivation, problem solving skills, innovation and perseverance that are present in an individual can help him to develop a successful entrepreneurial venture like TOMS. Hence individual with desired qualities play an important and pivotal role in a entrepreneurial venture. Nearly all the entrepreneurial ventures are a result of the vision, creativeness and labour of any one individual like Bill gates in Microsoft and so on.

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