TOMS Shoes, LLC

Is TOMS publicly traded?

No. TOMS Shoes, LLC is privately held by its creditor-owners: Jefferies Financial Group, Nexus Capital Management, and Brookfield Asset Management. It has never been publicly listed.

Who owns TOMS?

A consortium of former lenders acquired 100 percent of the company in December 2019 by converting roughly $300 million of debt into equity. Founder Blake Mycoskie and Bain Capital lost their stakes in the transaction.

When was TOMS founded?

Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS in 2006 in Los Angeles, building it around the One for One model of donating a pair of shoes for every pair sold.

Who is the CEO of TOMS?

Jessica Alsing serves as chief executive officer of TOMS Shoes, LLC, leading the company under creditor ownership from its Los Angeles headquarters.

Does Blake Mycoskie still own TOMS?

No. Mycoskie lost his remaining stake in the December 2019 restructuring and has no ownership or formal role in the company today.

What is TOMS' annual revenue?

The private company does not disclose current revenue. The last confirmed figure was approximately $392 million in 2019, and the company now operates at a smaller stabilized scale.

Where is TOMS headquartered?

TOMS Shoes, LLC is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, operating from offices in the Culver City area where its impact and design teams are based.

Blake Mycoskie founded the company in 2006 in Los Angeles after traveling in Argentina, where he saw children without shoes and encountered the alpargata canvas slip-on. His model fused product with mission: for every pair sold, TOMS would give a pair to a child in need. The "One for One" concept launched from his apartment with 250 pairs.

The brand grew explosively through the late 2000s on the strength of its giving story, expanding into eyewear in 2011 and coffee in 2014 while applying the model to each category. Celebrity adoption and grassroots marketing made TOMS a defining brand of the social-enterprise moment.

Bain Capital bought 50 percent of the company in 2014 at a $625 million valuation, leaving Mycoskie with the other half. The capital was meant to accelerate growth, but sales plateaued as the alpargata trend cooled and the giving model lost novelty, leaving the company with unsustainable debt.

In December 2019, facing a maturing $300 million term loan, the company struck an out-of-court restructuring: lenders Jefferies, Nexus, and Brookfield converted the debt to 100 percent equity and injected $35 million in new capital. Both Bain's stake and Mycoskie's were extinguished, and the founder left the business.

Under creditor ownership the company stabilized at smaller scale. It shifted the giving model in 2020 from one-for-one product donation to committing one-third of profits to grassroots organizations, maintained B Corp certification through the transition, and continued selling across about 50 countries through wholesale partners and e-commerce.

TOMS is a certified B Corporation, verified through B Lab's assessment of social and environmental performance, governance, and transparency. The certification survived the 2019 ownership change and remains the company's central ethical credential.

The one-third-of-profits giving model, adopted in 2020, replaced the original product-donation approach with cash grants to grassroots organizations, a structure the company argues serves communities more effectively than product drops.

Supply-chain standards required by B Corp certification go beyond industry baselines for its contracted manufacturing in Asia and Latin America. The company's cumulative impact since 2006 includes more than 100 million lives affected through donations and grants.

• B Corp Certification: Maintained since initial certification and renewed through the ownership transition, verifying social and environmental performance.
• Giving Impact: More than 100 million lives impacted since 2006 through shoe donations, sight restoration, and grant programs.
• Social Enterprise Recognition: The company is frequently cited in academic and business literature as a pioneering case study in the social-enterprise model.

The 2019 debt restructuring is the defining corporate controversy: the $300 million debt-for-equity conversion that erased founder and Bain Capital equity drew wide coverage as a cautionary tale about leveraged buyouts and trend-driven valuations.

The giving model attracted sustained criticism through the 2010s: development economists and media including Vox argued shoe donations could undercut local shoemakers in recipient countries, a debate that contributed to the shift from product donation to profit-sharing grants.

Product-level controversies have been minor, consisting of trade-dress disputes as competitors produced similar alpargata styles and routine compliance coordination. No major safety recalls affect the brand.