got his start as a climber in 1953 as a 14-year-old member of the Southern California Falconry Club. One of the adult leaders, Don Prentice, taught the boys how to rappel down the cliffs to the falcon aeries. This simple lesson sparked a lifelong love of rock climbing in Yvon.
Choyinard started hanging out at
where he met some other young climbers who belonged to the Sierra Club, including T.M. Herbert, Royal Robbins and Tom Frost. Eventually, the friends moved from Tahquitz to Yosemite, to teach themselves how to climb its big walls.
In 1957, Yvon went to a junkyard and bought a used coal-fired forge, a 138-pound anvil and some tongs and hammers, and started
Chouinard made his first pitons from an old harvester blade and tried them out with T.M. Herbert on the early ascents of the Lost Arrow Chimney and the north face of Sentinel Rock in Yosemite.
The word spread and soon friends
had to have Chouinard's chrome-molybdenum steel pitons. Before he knew it,
He could forge two of his pistons in an
hour and sold them for $1.50 each. Chouinard built a small shop in his parents' backyard in Burbank. Most of his tools were portable, so he could load up his car and travel the California coast from Big Sur to San Diego, surfing.
In Yosemite, he and his friends had to hide out from the rangers in the boulders above Camp 4 after they overstayed the two-week camping limit. They took pride in the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value;
Their heros were Muir, Thoreau, Emerson, Gaston Rebuffat, Riccardo Cassin and Hermann Buhl.
Yvon went into partnership with Tom Frost and started Chouinard Equipment. During the nine years that Frost and Chouinard were partners, they redesigned and improved almost every climbing tool to make them stronger, lighter, simpler and more functional. Their guiding design pricible came from Antonie de Saint Exupery, the french aviator:
Chouinard Equipment had become the largest supplier of climbing headwear in the United States. It had also become an environmental villain because its gear was damaging the rock. The same fragile cracks had to endure repeated hammering of pitons during both placement and removal, and the disfiguring was servere. Chouinard and Frost decided to minimize the piton buisness. This was to be the fisrt big enviornmental step we would take over the years.
Fortunately, there was an alternative: aluminum chocks that could be wedged by hand rather than hammered in and out of cracks. We introduced them in the first Chouinard Equipment catalog in 1972. A 14-page essay by Sierra climber Doug Robinson on how to use chocks appeared in the catalog, paving the way for future environmental essays in Patagonia's catalogs. Within a few months of the catalog's mailing, the piton business had atrophied;
On a winter climbing trip to Scotland in 1970,
Chouinard bought a regulation-team rugby shirt to wear rock climbing. Overbuilt to withstand the rigors of rugby, the shirt had a collar that would keep the herdware slings from cutting into the neck. It was blue, with two red and on yellow center stripe across the chest. Back in the States, Chouinard wore it around his climbing friends, who asked where they could get one.
Our company was growing, and
we began to
sell clothing
as a way to help support the marginally profitable hardware business. By 1972, we were selling rugby shirts from England, polyurethane rain catalogues and bivouac sacks from Scotland, boiled wood gloves and mittens from Austria, and hand-knit reversible beanies from Boulder (no two were alike).
At the time when the entire mountaineering community relied on the traditional, moisture-absorbing layers of cotton, wool and down, we looked elsewhere for inspiration--and protection. We decided that a staple of North Atlantic fishermen,
the synthetic pile sweater
would be an ideal mountain layer, because it would insulate well without absorbing moisture. But we needed some fabric to test out our idea, and it wasn't easy to find.
Finally, Malinda Chouinard, acting on a hunch, drove to the Merchandise Mart in Los Angeles. She found what she was looking for at Malden Mills, freshly emerged from bankruptcy after the collapse of the fake fur-coat market. We sewed up some samples and field tested them in alpine conditions. Synthetic pile had a couple of drawbacks, but it was astonishingly warm, particularly when used with a shell. It insulated when wet, but also dried in minutes, and it
reduced the number of layers a climber had to wear.
Our replacement
for polypropylene
came in 1984.
While walking around the Sporting Goods show in Chicago, Chouinard saw a demonstration of polyester football jerseys. Milliken, the company that made the jerseys, had developed a process that permanently etched the surface of the fiber as it was extruded, so that the surface became hydrophilic-it wicked moisture away from the body to the outside where it could evaporate. Chouinard saw the fabric as perfect for underwear, and Capilene poltester was born.
we shifted our entire line of polypropylene underwear to the new capilene fabric. It was a big risk, simialr to our introduction of chocks in 1972. During the same season, we also introduced the new Synchilla fleece. The older products made of polypropylene and bunting had represented 70 percent of our sales. But our loyal core customers quickly realized the advantages of Capilene and Synchilla, and sales soared.
During the early 1980s, we made another important shift. At the time when all outdoor products were either tan, forest green or (at the most colorful) powder blue, we drenched the Patagonia line in vivid color. We introduced cobalt, teal, French red, aloe, seafoam and iced mocha. Patagonia clothing, still rugged, moved beyond bland looking to blasphemous.
at one point we made Inc. Magazine's list of the fastest growing privately held companies. That rapid growth came to a halt in 1991, when a recession crimped our sales and the bank called in our revolving loan. To pay off the debt, we had to lay of 20 percent of our work force-many of them friends and friends of friends. We had become dependent on growth we couldn't sustain. Yvon took his
top managers to Patagonia to reflect on the kind of business Patagonia should be.
We were able, in many ways, to keep alive our cultural values, even during the heavy-growth years, and after the shock of the 1991 layoffs. We were surrounded by friends at work who could dress however they wanted, even barefooted.
The company sponsored ski and climbing trips for employees; many more trips were underaken informally by groups of friends who would drive up to the Sierra In Friday night and arrive home, groggy but happy, in time for work on Monday morning.
we have had no private offices, an architectural arrangement that sometimes creates distractions but also helps keep communication open. That same year we opened a cafeteria that serves healthy, mostly organic food. The only thing that doesn't change here is the beans and rice, served every Monday.
We also opened, at Malinda Chouinard's insistence, an on-site childcare center-at the time one of only 150 in the country (today there are thousands, though still not enough). The presence of children playing in the yard or having lunch with their parents in the cafeteria helps keep the company atmosphere
to the increasingly apparent environmental crisis. What we began to read-about global warming, the cutting and burning of tropical forests, the rapid loss of groundwater and topsoil, acid rain, the ruin of rivers and creeks from silting-over dams-reinforced what we saw with our eyes and smelled with our noses during our travels.
At the same time, we slowly became aware that uphill battles fought by small,
dedicated groups
of people
to save patches could yield significant results. The first lesson came right here at home, in the early '70s. A group of us went to a city council meeting to help protect a local surf break from a development plan. We knew vaguely that the Ventura River had once been a major steelhead habitat. Then, during the '40s, two dams were built, and water diverted. Except for winter rains, the only water left at the river mouth flowed from the sewage point.
At that city council meeting, several experts testified that the river was dead, that channeling the mouth would have no effect on remaining birds or wildlife, or on our surf break. Things looked grim until Mark Capelli, a 25-year-old biology student, showed photos he had taken along the river-of birds that lived in the willows, of muskrats and water snakes, of eels that spawned in the estuary. He even showed a slide of a steelhead smolt: yes, 50 or so steelhead still came to spawn in our "dead" river.
We began to make regular donations to smaller groups working to save or restore habitat rather than give money to the NGOs with big staffs, overheads and corporate connections. In 1986, we committed to donating 10 percent of profits each year to these groups. We later upped the ante to one percent of sales, profit or not. We have
The formation of 1% for the Planet in 2002 made it easy for other cmapines to do the same.
we initiated our first national enviornmental campiagn on behalf of an alternative master plan to deurbanize the Yosemite Valley. Each year since, we have undertaken a major education campign on an enviornmental issue. We took an early position against gloablization of trade where it means compaines of enviornmental and labor standards.
We have argued for dam removal where silting, marginally useful dams comprise fish life. We have supported wildlands projects that seek to preserve ecosystems whole and create corrdiros for wildlife to roam.
to teach marketing, campaign and publicity skills to some of the groups we worked within. The lessons shared by leaders and experts from the nonprofit and for-profit worlds were so well received that we published a book so more activists could benefit from them.
We also, early on, began initial steps to reduce our role as a corporate polluter: we have been using recycled-content paper for our catalogues since the mid-80's. We worked with Maden Mills to developed recycled polyester from soda bottles for use in out Synchilla fleece. We assessed the dyes we used and eliminated colors from the line that required the use of toxic metals and sulfides. In 2007, we made our efforts public-the good and the bad-with the launch of
Opened in 1996, our distribution center in Reno, Nevada, achieved a
through solar-tracking skylights and radiant heating; we used recycled content for everything from rebar to carpet to the partitions between urinals. We retrofitted lighting systems in our existing retail stores and buildouts for new stores became more and more respectful of the environments.
When we commissioned an independent environmental impact assessment of four of our most-used fabrics, cotton was surprisingly the biggest villain-and it didn't have to be. Farmers had grown cotton organically for thousands of years. Only after World War II did the chemicals originally developed as nerve gasses become available for commercial use, to eliminate the need for weeding fields by hand. After several trips to San Joaquin Valley, where we smelled the selenium pods and saw the lunar landscape cotton fields, we asked ourselves a critical question:
we made the decision to take our cotton sportswear 100 percent organic by 1996. We had to go directly to the few farmers who had gone back to organic methods. And then we had to go to the ginners and spinners and persuade them to clean their equipment after running what would be for them very low quantities. We had to talk to the certifies so that all the fiber could be traced back to the bale. We succeed. Every Patagonia garment made of cotton in 1996 was organic and has been ever since-though we are beginning to experiment with recycled cotton.
and the 30-year anniversary of this company looming, Yvon Chouinard began writing a philosophical manual for employees to learn on as the company grew. That manual became the best selling book Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005, Penguin Random House.) Motivated by the book's success and our shared love of stories, Patagonia Books war formed, and its first title, Yosemite in the Sixties by Glen Denny, was published in 2007.
In January 2012, Patagonia became the first California company to become a benefit corporation-a legal framework that enables misson driven compaines like Patagonia to stay that way as they grow and change. We are also a
To quality as a B Corp, a business must have an explicit social or anviornmental misson and a legally binding focicoary responsibility to take into account the interest of workers, the community, and te enviornment, as well as its hareholers. To maintain B Corp certification, we must upate and verifty our qualification every three yeas.
Worn Wear-our used clothing and repair program-began as a blog started by Keith and Lauren Malloy in 2012. They envisioned a place for people to share stories about their favorite Patagonia products and the badges of honor-the rips, tears, patches and stains-that recall treasured outdoor memories. The stories were a tangible reminder of the value of durability over disposability. They inspired the company to expand its humble repair service into the
construct a mobile repair truck out of reclaimed materials-so a small team could travel the country and repair people's clothing for free-and start a full-scale clothing business.
In 2013, Yvon Chouinard announced the formation of a venture capital fund to help start-up compaines thatplace enviornmental and social returns.
after the original strcuture that housed Chouinard Equipment-this unquie fund helps foawrd-looking the entrepeneurs think and act long-term.
As we continued to get our own house in order, attention turned to our supply chain.
symbol is an assurance that some of the money spent on the product goes directly to its producers and stays in their community. Patagonia, in partnership with Fair Trade USA, has been making clothes that provide this benefit since 2014. Fair Trade is a first step on the path toward paying living wages throughout out supply chain.
we launched Patagonia Action Works to connect our customers with the environmental action groups we support. People have volunteered their time, signed petitions and donated money to hundreds of non-profit groups around the world because of this dynamic online platform.
Locally, our stores hold Action Works events to help build a deeper sense of community with the small, tireless and often underappreciated grassroots activists working in their neighborhoods.
Due to the urgency of climate change, we can no longer be satisfied with lessening out impact on the planet.
Patagonia Provisions took the first step when it released Long Root Ale, a beer brewed with Kernza grain for its carbon-sequestration potential. Adopting Regenerative Organic farming practices in our supply chain to grow fibers and food is the next big step. In late 2018, Yvon Chouinard and CEO Rose Marcario changed Patagonia's purpose statement to reflect this shift: "We're in business to save our home planet."
September 2022:
Nearly 50 years after Yvon Chouinard began his experiment in responsible business, ownership of Patagonia is transferred to two new entities: Patagonia Purpose Trust and the nonprofit Holdfast Collective. Every dollar that is not reinvested into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet. "Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source," said Chouinard. "I am dead serious about saving this planet."
It's time for us as a company to to address the issue of consumerism head on.
To lighten our environmental footprint, everyone needs to consume less. Businesses need to make fewer things of higher quality. Customers need to think twice before they buy.
It would be hypocritical for us to work for environmental change without encouraging customers to consume less.
To reduce environmental damage, we all have to reduce consumption as well as make products in more environmentally sensitive, less harmful ways.
Why the provoactive headline if we're only asking people to buy less and buy more thoughtfully?
To call attention to the issue in a strong, clear way.
Don't buy this jacket.
