TOMS HQ
I just got back from spending a few days in LA, it was awesome! The Better Good was chosen by TOMS shoes as one of only two Canadian retail stores to go down to Santa Monica, CA and spend a day at HQ. I didn't know quite what to expect but ended up having such a blast all day. They did such a good job of making sure we had lots of fun and also got in a lot of info on the whole TOMS operation.
Here is the TOMS shuttle van coming to pick me up at the hotel. I was joined by 4 wonderful people from Korea, 2 from the TOMS UK office and 1 more Canadian girl who owns a shop in Edmonton.
Arriving at TOMS HQ in beautiful Santa Monica! It is so nice here and the warehouse/offices are a reasonable bike ride to the beach, shopping and the Santa Monica pier. I am with Neeka, an intern in the international relations department.
I absolutely loved the work environment at TOMS, every employee has a cubicle made out of plywood which kind of sounds like it could be awful but it wasn't! Every one was decorated and had lots of character and there were TOMS everywhere you looked being used for all kinds of things.
Another awesome thing about the whole scene there is that there are no "corner offices" or other signs of hierarchy. Top executives,including the founder Blake Mycoskie, have their offices in the same space as everyone else, interns, new employees and heads of departments. Also, there are no stuffy job titles that show rank of any kind. Every employee has to have shoe in their title and they choose it themselves, such as Chief Shoe Giver or Punky Shoester.
The style-your-sole part of the day was so fun!! I was a bit worried because I am not at all artistic but I stuck to something simple and they turned out alright. After being a part of one, I am totally sold on style-your-sole parties. We are definitely going to plan to do one at the shop and I would highly recommend calling us up if you want to have a super original, fun birthday party or any kind of party for that matter. Here is some more info on the concept and remember kids can design shoes too!
The rest of the afternoon was spent at a screening of the TOMS documentary (so good to get an understanding of the start-up of such an innovative company) By the way, we have a copy of the shop that we loan out so stop by if you want to bring it home for a night!
After that we got to meet with a representative of the giving department and I got to slam her with as many questions as I could come up with and there were lots! I will do a separate post reporting back all of the nitty-gritty details of how, where, why TOMS give shoes and how they insure that their #1 goal "to give responsibly" is upheld.
We wrapped up the day with the TOMS weekly Friday after work Happy Hour! They plan so many awesome incentives for employees, no wonder so many people have worked there since the very beginning. Here are some of the fun things the staff take advantage of: regular costume challenges, massage therapy appointments on fridays for any employee that signs up, use of the TOMS shuttle vans and bikes, opportunity to go on a shoe drop and of course happy hour where there is an awesome spread of food and drinks and where the staff hang out and decompress after the work week.
Thanks for reading about my TOMS HQ experience!
