This past weekend, the 42 person full-time staff of TOMS Shoes traveled up to Mammoth for a retreat. We packed in to our 5 Vaga-vans, which the past and future Vagabonds use to travel all over the US. Although they’re pretty awesome vans, wrapped with photos of children from TOMS Shoe Drops, I can attest we all have a new found respect for our Vagabonds who live out of these monsters for 10 weeks at a time.
Our family vacation was complete with bonding activities, movie watching, big group dinners, jokes and magic tricks, and plenty of good runs down the slopes. Friday evening, we all packed in to one room to hear Blake’s revelations from his past month in Argentina. The room was still, but the energy was alive. To hear the founder and Chief Shoe Giver of such an incredible company stand in front you, barefoot, with a wrinkled page of scribbled notes in his hands, and share his genuine excitement for all the groundbreaking things we have accomplished and will accomplish in the coming months, revitalized our spirits to charge full force in ‘09. The coming year will not be easy, he told us, but these are the times we grow even closer (especially when you spend an entire weekend, 24 hours a day, with the people you typically spend 40+ hours a week with).
But this week we’ve traded our skis and snowboards for laptops and calendars. Although we might miss waking up early to get out on the mountain, coming in to this office and working hard to make a real difference in the world isn’t such a bad reason to roll out of bed either.
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Tags: mammoth · ski trip · TOMS culture · who we are
Categories: HQ Updates1 Comment
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well said, cait!