Timberland's familiar motto "Make it Better", and a commitment to making top notch, rugged, and carefully designed products has helped to make them a household name among footwear. Yet the success of this powerful brand is based not just on great products, but also because of the company's intensive focus on realizing higher goals than shoe sales. Timberland is involved in a number of innovative projects that are showing that businesses can do and be better, and this commitment has resulted in devoted customers who want to be associated with all that Timberland has come to represent.

For example, Jeffrey Swartz, CEO of Timberland and grandson of the original owner, created a dynamic program where all employees receive 40 hours of paid leave to perform community service. Employees rave about the opportunity, and innovative programs like these have led to the Company's selection in the top 10 of Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2006, and this is not the first time they have featured there.

Swartz's policy is simple but effective. He believes "that doing well (business-wise) and doing good are inextricably linked" and it has! Under his leadership, the company has seen a huge return on investment, and an increase in revenue from $156.1 million in 1989 to $1.1 billion in 2000, and that growth continues. At Timberland things are approached very differently than most other companies. Employees work hard to make some of the world's most innovative products, then use paid time-off to make a difference in the community, where they have logged more than 130,000 hours of community service. They have also allowed a national youth corps, City Year New Hampshire, to set up shop within Timberland's head office, and are hard at work at encouraging young people from diverse backgrounds to get involved in a year of full-time community service. Brand loyalty is built early on.

Yet there is more to this effective strategy than "feel good" service projects. Timberland has embedded these strategies into their core business, so that the growth of their business is linked to their value proposition. Timberland carefully managed its supplier relationships so that it avoided the underhanded labor policies of many other clothing companies. As a result their brand was enhanced when consumers were up in arms about sweatshops, and other companies had their faces covered in mud. Timberland was also involved in an innovative project to cut out toxic materials from its rubber production, which threatened to balloon their productions costs, but through careful business planning they were able to do the right thing, and still keep the business profitable. Business strategy was key to this project's success.
The result is that Timberland is winning hearts and not just minds, and customers know they are buying more than shoes, which shows that its strategy makes business sense. Jeffrey Swartz continues to develop Timberland as a twenty-first century example for socially responsible corporations around the world, but that example is built on a quality product offering, which customers love, and that makes his company stand out as a company that does good by being great.