A world we dare to imagine

Name: BOGOM

BOGOM is an organization that I believe will help support a sustainable economy in rural areas. Companies such as Toms pride themselves on their BOGO, or buy one give one, principals. For every pair of Toms you buy, they give one for free to a child in need. By promoting this idea, people are more willing to pay premium prices because they believe they are making an impact. If people paid $50 for one pair, it wouldn't be as appealing as when they pay $50 for 2 pairs.

Toms are shoes that cost less than $4 to manufacture, yet they sell it at $50 giving them a 1,250% profit. While it is a genuinely heartfelt idea to donate shoes to those in need, BOGO companies are actually doing more harm than good. I believe the solution to ending poverty in rural areas is to not give away things for free, but to introduce it into the economy as a marketable good.

Using Toms as an example, when they give shoes to those in need, these people now have free shoes that they didn't have before. Since they now have shoes, they won't need to spend money to buy shoes. Shoemakers, who make a living off of selling shoes, lose business and may ultimately close down. The economy takes a hit because shoe sellers can't generate income or spend money to buy other goods. I still applaud BOGO companies for taking initiative at helping rural communities, but I believe they are in it more for the marketability of BOGO rather than the benefits.

BOGOM's goal is to hopefully improve upon the BOGO principal. We plan to be the middle man between companies and the people of rural communities. Using Toms again as an example, instead of Toms directly giving shoes to kids, we will take these shoes from Toms and distribute them to shoe salesmen. Now they can sell these shoes at extremely discounted prices because they didn't have to make them. The community benefits by being able to purchase shoes for cheap, granted it's not free, but it will help circulate money through the community. Unfortunately, this organization won't thrive because there is no money generated to pay our workers. To mitigate this problem, we would have to sell these shoes to the shoes salesmen. But we would sell it for cheap to minimize the money spent by sales people. In this way, we hope to create a sustainable economy between the market and the consumers.

AMDP should support this organization because I believe this is a necessary step into ending poverty in rural areas. We can give so much for so little, but we have to do it in the right fashion. We cannot just hand to them free items because stores will be put out of business. They will not learn the value of money as well if items are constantly given to them. Instead, we should have them create supply and demand to help kickstart a sustainable economy. In the end, those who buy from BOGO companies will actually be making an impact for those in need.