Let My People Go Surfing (2016)

I confess, I drank the Kool-Aid.

I’ve wilfully chosen to review a book written by Yvon Chouinard, the founder and leader of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, and I’m wary of the fact that I may be about to write a free piece of promotion for the company, having read a disguised piece of propaganda.  However, I hope what actually follows is a sober investigation of a truly modern and sustainable company; a company that I believe can provide a blueprint for others. 

Buy their clothes, don’t buy their clothes; I don’t care.  But I do care that Patagonia has a point to make about how to run a conscientious and positive company.  It’s a company that has a point to make about how to embrace responsibility and about how the private sector can be an environmental champion.  

History

Yvon Chouinard explains his reluctance to become a businessman without regard to convention.  The fact that his story may sound like a pastiche of the ‘hippy entrepreneur’ or the ‘champagne socialist’ is not indicative of a caricature.  Chouinard’s story is as original and authentic as they come, and may only now be met by cynicism due to the number of phoney replicas that have attempted to mimic his ethos in the subsequent decades.

For it was in the 1960s, when Chouinard was climbing the mountains of North America as a young man, that he made his first foray into business.   At twenty-something he was hiding out in Yosemite National Park, USA, evading park rangers who sought to enforce the two-week camping limit.  He took special pride in the fact that climbing had no economic value and viewed himself and his friends as rebels from the consumer culture.  Characteristic of a 1960s idealist, Chouinard viewed politicians and businessmen as “greaseballs” and corporations were the source of all evil.  The natural world was his home and he idolised the European climbers: Gaston Rebuffat, Riccardo Cassin and Hermann Buhl. 

However, it was the European attitude to climbing that gave him his first business idea.  The European attitude to climbing mountains was to “conquer them”.  All the gear was left in place to make it easier for others to follow.  If you tried to take out and reuse the iron pitons, the head would often break off.  However, American climbers were brought up reading the transcendental writers: Ralph Emerson and Henry Thoreau.  You climb the mountains or visit the wilderness but leave no trace of having been there.  It was this sense of appreciation and preservation that led Chouinard Equipment Ltd to begin manufacturing the world’s first reusable climbing piton.

In 1966, Chouinard moved from Burbank to Ventura (both in California) to be closer to the point of the surf breaks of Ventura and Santa Barbara.  He set up shop in a rented tin boiler room of an abandoned packing company slaughterhouse and set about manufacturing climbing equipment for his dirtbag friends.

The guiding principle of his design stemmed from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French aviator, ”In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to it nakedness.”  This minimalist attitude, striving always for quality and durability, has been the Northern Star of Patagonia design ever since.

By 1970, Chouinard Equipment had become the largest supplier of climbing hardware in the United States.  However, it had also started down the path to becoming an environmental villain. 

The popularity of climbing, though growing steadily, remained concentrated on the same well-tried routes in areas such as El Dorado Canyon near Boulder, the Shawangunks in New York and Yosemite Valley.  The repeated hammering of hard steel pitons, during both placement and removal in the same fragile cracks, was severely disfiguring the rock.  After an ascent of the nose on El Capitan in California, which had been pristine a few summers earlier, Chouinard came home disgusted with the degradation he had seen.  In a radical and cannibalising decision, he decided Chouinard Equipment would phase out of the piton business.  Pitons were the mainstay of his business, but he could not avoid the realisation that they were destroying the areas he loved.

A transition to climbing gear and clothing saw the birth and growth of Patagonia.  The business grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s using traditional practices: increasing the number of products, finding new dealers, opening new stores and developing new foreign markets.  However, it was this very success that taught Chouinard the value of sustainability.  The danger of outgrowing itself posed difficult philosophical questions for the company.  Can a company that wants to make the best quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike?  Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables?  Can you have it all?  The problem haunted Chouinard as Patagonia evolved.  Simultaneously, another problem came to haunt Chouinard more: the deterioration of the natural world. 

Consequently, when the business overextended itself in the early 1990s, Chouinard and his colleagues went back to drawing board.  Just as they had done when they reinvented themselves without pitons, Patagonia set about drafting a completely new raison d’etre to capture a love for quality products, respect for the environment, empowerment of employees and engagement with customers.

Patagonia Values

The following statement of values was drafted in 1991.  I struggle to think of company in the last 26 years that has more perfectly captured the essence of what it is to love what you do, to do it well and to address problems bigger than yourself.  To the modern eye, these values may be considered self-evident or uncontroversial.  However, as one of the first holistic expressions of sustainability in private practice, I believe it was ahead of its time.

• “All decisions of the company are made in the context of the environmental crisis.  We must strive to do no harm. Wherever possible, our acts should serve to decrease the problem.  Our activities in this area will be under constant evaluation and reassessment as we seek constant improvement.
• Maximum attention is given to product quality, as defined by durability, minimum use of resources (including materials, raw energy and transport), multifunctionalism, nonobsolescence and the kind of beauty that emerges from absolute suitability to task.  Concern over transitory fashion trends is specifically not a corporate value.
• The board and management recognise that successful communities are part of a sustainable environment.  We consider ourselves to be an integral part of communities that also include our employees, the communities in which we live, our suppliers and customers. We recognise our responsibilities to all these relationships and make our decisions with their general benefit in mind.  It is our policy to employ people who share the fundamental values of this corporation while representing cultural and ethnic diversity.
• Without giving its achievements primacy, we seek profit on our activities.  However, growth and expansion are values not basic to this corporation.
• To help mitigate any negative environmental consequences of our business activity, we impose on ourselves an annual tax of 1 percent of our gross sales, or 10 percent of profits, whichever is greater.  All proceeds of this tax are granted to local community and environmental activism.
• At all levels of operation – board, management and staff – Patagonia encourages proactive stances that reflect our values.  These include activities that influence the larger corporate community to also adjust its values and behaviour, and that support, through activism and financially, grassroots and national campaigners who work to solve the current environmental and social crisis.
• In our internal operations, top management will work as a group and with maximum transparency.  This includes an “open book” policy that enables employees’ easy access to decisions, within the normal boundaries of personal privacy and “trade secrecy”.  At all levels of corporate activity, we encourage open communication, a collaborative atmosphere and maximum simplicity, while we simultaneously seek dynamism and innovation.”

I want to spend the rest of this review examining how these carefully crafted values inform the product, marketing, financial, management and environmental philosophies of the company.

Product Philosophy

One of the first things Patagonia did after its struggles in 1991 – and as part of the sober task of rebuilding the company by doing the right thing – was to commission an independent assessment of the environmental impacts of the fibres most commonly used in clothes: hemp, linen, rayon, cotton, polyester, nylon and wool.

Let’s look at wool, for example.  Wool can be very damaging or benign,  depending on whether the sheep are grazing in fragile desert environments or in areas with frequent rain, plenty of natural grass, and no predators.  Wool also relies on chemicals at every stage.  The sheep are dipped in pesticides to kill parasites; the fleece is scoured with petroleum-based detergents; the yarn is bleached with chlorine and then dyed with heavy, metal-based dyes.  Evidently, understanding your supply chain is crucial to being a conscientious producer.

Consequently, Patagonia created an alliance with the Nature Conservancy and Ovis 21, an Argentine company that manages and develops a network of wool producers to reverse more than one hundred years of overgrazing on fifteen million acres of Patagonia (the region, not the company) grassland.  The result was a more sustainable grazing protocol involving the movement of herds that helped build the soil, transport the seeds, and deepen the roots of plants to reverse the desertification of the grasslands.  Additionally, it further cleaned up the processing of the wool to eliminate the use of chlorine, dioxins and other harsh chemicals.

One of the first ingredients Patagonia identified as needing to be phased out was polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is a toxic, carcinogenic plastic used everywhere in our society.  It’s in the coating on durable vinyl luggage and it’s a plasticiser for printing on T-shirts.  Next, Patagonia sought to change neoprene production, the most environmentally harmful part of making a wetsuit.  By partnering with Yulex, they were able to develop a biodegradable wetsuit material that used guayule, a desert shrub native to the southwestern United States.  This plant-based biorubber reduced the environmental footprint of wetsuits, with no loss of warmth, stretch or durability.

In doing so, Patagonia was one of the first clothing companies to think about product life cycles in a holistic and sustainable way.  Going one step further, Patagonia was also the first to apply industrial design principles to clothing design.  Just as Chouinard had followed the teachings of Saint-Exupery in designing his first pitons, he was now invoking the precept of industrial design: that the function of an object should determine its design and materials.  In a throw-away culture, he recognised that the overall durability of a product is only as good as its weakest element.  Therefore, the ultimate goal should be a product whose parts wear out at roughly the same time and only after a long life.

To get all the components of a product to be roughly equal in durability, researchers would continually test in both the lab and the field.  They tested until something failed, strengthened that part, then saw what failed next, strengthened that, and so on until confident that the product is durable as a whole.  Patagonia is so serious about its promise to deliver a durable product that it has set up a repair centre in Reno, Nevada that is free to its customers.  It is the largest garment repair facility in North America and it employs more than fifty people who complete more than forty thousand repairs per year.

And since function comes first, a refusal to compare themselves to competitors’ most popular styles and to replicate popular items or chase fashion trends is paramount.  When the clothing line gets too big, and the differences between products become too small, that’s when the company knows it is not living up to its own philosophy.

Marketing Philosophy

Chouinard’s distain for conventional forms of marketing is summed up perfectly by the following excerpt from the book:

“When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company.  I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competitor and can’t be sold on its merits.”

In attempting to build an authentic brand that never strays too far from its roots as a company for the offbeat climbers, campers, rafters, skiers and general dirtbags of the world, it’s obvious that Chouinard views the hyperbole of most modern advertising campaigns as the antithesis of authenticity.  Chouinard proudly crows that others are wasting their money; to him advertising rates dead last as a credible source of information.  Instead, what has worked best has been paid announcements for new store openings or helping create environmental awareness on specific issues in which the company is involved.  Having a genuine link to a cause is a much stronger identifier and reason for customer loyalty than memorable logos or commercials.

The basic tenets of the Patagonia philosophy are:

“a deep appreciation for the environment and a strong motivation to help solve the environmental crisis; a passion for the natural world; a healthy scepticism toward authority; a love for difficult, human-powered sports that require practice and mastery; a distain for motorised sports like snowmobiling or jet skiing; a bias for wacko often self-deprecating humour; a respect and taste for a real adventure (defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive – and certainly not as the same person); and a belief that less is more (in design and in consumption).”

Well said, but is this just careful marketing of their own?  Obviously the answer is yes, and I’m well aware that I’m the target market for just such a statement, but does that prevent it from being genuine?  As is becoming a common thread in this review, it’s possible that I’m a sucker for an ingenious branding campaign.  But, what is also evident from the company’s actions is that it can walk the walk. 

If it weren’t for the financial, management and environmental philosophies that follow, I would be the first to point the finger of hypocrisy.  As it is, taking a principled and often stymieing  stance, gives the company an authenticity that feels distinctly different to most companies’ posturing.

Financial Philosophy

Chouinard begs the question, who are businesses really responsible to?  Their customers?  Shareholders?  Employees?  Patagonia’s financial philosophy argues that it’s none of the above.  Fundamentally, businesses are responsible to their resource base.  Without a healthy environment there are no shareholders, no employees, no customers and no business.

The crucial element of the business that allows Patagonia to take this slightly philosophical and altruistic stance is its ownership structure.   Patagonia remains a private company held by a select few, likeminded shareholders (Chouinard remains the majority shareholder).  As Chouinard quips, “It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise you are crazy.”

Chouinard reports getting approached by prospective buyers almost weekly, and their intent is always the same.  They see an undervalued company that they can rapidly grow and take public.  But being a publicly held corporation would put shackles on how the company operates, restrict what it does with its profits and put it on a growth track that is counter to its values.  Patagonia’s intent is to remain a closely held private company so that it can continue to focus on its bottom line: doing good. 

In many companies, the tail (finance) wags the dog (corporate decisions), but by remaining a private company, decision making is not governed by short-term stock price and a long-term approach can be administered in a relatively calm fashion.

Staying private and relatively debt-free is a luxury of the lucky, brave or mature, and there are a thousand good reasons for a company to leverage its equity to attract new investment and grow the business.  But underlying Patagonia’s eccentricity is a forgotten truth: modern businesses are too obsessed with listing themselves on the stock exchange and having the largest growth figures.  By retaining private control and developing a consensus around sustainable growth, the tyranny of the shareholder and the profit motive can be curtailed and more impactful objectives for being in business can take precedence.

The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to have it all, the sooner it dies.  Patagonia will never be the size of Apple.  But perhaps that’s the point.  I know I’d rather have 1,000 Patagonias than one Apple.

Management Philosophy

When you actively employ a bunch of surfers, the office is going to want to be pretty quiet when the perfect wave rolls in.  The fact that Chouinard is usually the first one out the door indicates that, to Patagonia, “flex time” and “work-life balance” aren’t just platitudes.

In fact, Patagonia may have been one of the first companies to introduce the idea of flex time.  Your work needs to get done, but Chouinard doesn’t strictly enforce working hours and openly encourages his employees to take advantage of any weather that lends itself to being outdoors; whether that’s fresh snow, big waves or just warm sunshine.

This outlook is all about maintaining employees’ passion for the sports that underlie the company’s success, but also it’s about creating a community in which employees feel respected, empowered and valued. 

It’s this same outlook that led Patagonia to create a free, on-site childcare centre for each and every one of its offices.  Employees are encouraged to bring their kids to work with them, drop them off at the childcare centre and stop in to see them whenever they want during the day.  Chouinard argues that the childcare centres make financial sense too.  Considering that mothers can return to work earlier, breastfeed whenever they need to throughout the day and be on hand to deal with any issues, it is no surprise that employee retention is well above industry average and the company rarely encounters any issues to do with employee absenteeism.

Additionally, Chouinard is big proponent of smaller offices that foster this sense of community and reduce the often impersonal way that companies sometimes work:

“I believe that for the best communication and to avoid bureaucracy, you should ideally have no more than a hundred people working in one location.  This is an extension of the fact that democracy seems to work best in small societies, where people have a sense of personal responsibility.  In a small Sherpa or Inuit village there’s no need to hire trash collectors or firemen; everyone takes care of community problems.  And there’s no need for police; evil has a hard time hiding from peer pressure.”

I have no doubt that, were I to talk to Patagonia employees, I could still find plenty of people who would have stories of nightmare projects, horrible bosses and workplace grievances.  However, in creating an environment that reduces stress, increases autonomy and respects the many dimensions that make up a full and challenging life, I think Patagonia is at the vanguard of modern working practices.

Environmental Philosophy

You could say that all of the philosophies discussed so far have an environmental element, but what separates Patagonia from a lot of “green” businesses is that it’s committed to putting its money where its mouth is.

In 1986, the company promised to donate ten percent of profits each year to grassroots environmental movements.  The company later upped the ante to one percent of sales, or ten percent of pre-tax profits, whichever was greater.   Small groups and activists working on specific problems are given preference over large NGOs with big staffs, overheads, corporate connections and broad remits.  What is more, employees are free to nominate groups and to donate their time to the cause. 

Chouinard had a vision that Patagonia’s commerce could be used to create a groundswell of environmental change and now he’s trying to get as many other companies as possible to share in his vision.

In 2001, Craig Mathews (the founder of Blue Ribbon Flies, a US fly fishing outfitter) and Chouinard decided to start an organisation called 1% for the Planet, an alliance of businesses pledging to donate at least one percent of sales toward active efforts to protect and restore the natural environment.  Each 1% member disperses its own contributions directly, which simplifies the decision making process, minimises bureaucracy and encourages member companies to develop independent relationships with the groups they support.  In return, member companies then use the 1% for the Planet logo to communicate their environmental commitment to their customers.

The company has taken this commitment one step further with the creation of Tin Shed Ventures, the company’s venture capital fund for environmental start-up businesses that has recently helped to start a clean textiles business and food waste collection business.

There is no delusion that large public corporations will suddenly become responsible for their own sake before being forced to by the law or until it is proved to be more profitable for the shareholders.  But what can be advanced is a form of capitalism that is conscientious and sustainable.  Just as we would hope to behave as individuals, companies can discipline themselves to lead an examined life, clean up their own act, support civil democracy and influence their peers by example.

Conclusion

As I tried to allude to at the beginning of this review, I’m aware that I could be charged with naivety in the extreme for swallowing this one-sided account of a business’s persona.  I understand that supporting environmental regeneration is a sound business decision for an outdoor clothing company for two primary reasons: customers are likely to feel a kinship with the brand for supporting a cause they care about, and the preservation of mountains, rivers and grasslands is likely to sustain the very activities that create the demand for their products.

Nevertheless, I believe that Chouinard has harnessed the free-thinking rebellion of the 1960s in corporate form.  He’s subverted the norms of capitalism by turning what may have become a driver of private wealth into a tool for the redistribution of wealth into environmental causes.

As Chouinard neatly summarises:

“It seems to me if there is an answer, it lies in these words: restraint, quality and simplicity.  We have to get away from thinking that all growth is good.  There’s a big difference between growing fatter and growing stronger.”

I, for one, think there is room for a lot more businesses like Patagonia.