Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

by Yvon Chouinard

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 its nakedness.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line—and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.

I don’t use computers even now and have no interest in any electronic stuff, but one day I thought I should at least go over to the computer room and check out the new IBM System 38 that everyone was calling Roscoe. I looked at this big metal thing and exclaimed, “I paid a quarter of a million dollars for that!” “No,” the manager said, “that’s the air conditioner. Roscoe is over there.”

People have too many choices these days. They are tired of constantly having to make decisions, particularly when it takes a major effort to make intelligent decisions—i.e.,

The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process.

In North Beach in San Francisco we found a building we loved, a garage built in 1924, with great natural lighting and a garden out back. Local friends tried to discourage us because the location had no dedicated parking and was off the beaten path for shopping. But we thought our customers would come to us, and rather than pay high rent in a well-trafficked location, we preferred to put the money into renovating this old garage and make it into a beautiful destination store. We designed our own racks and shelving. We displayed most of the clothes folded rather

than hung and worked out our chromatic scheme to get the most “pop” from the color. We blew up image shots from the catalog and hung them on the walls.

I wanted to create a local hangout,

In owning our own retail stores, we’ve learned that it is far more profitable to turn that inventory more quickly than to have high margins or raise prices.

What we started many years ago—to use photos of real people doing real things and putting captions below—is now copied by every catalog and magazine in the outdoor industry.

A company that doesn’t take quality seriously will attempt to maximize profits by cost cutting, increasing sales by creating an artificial demand for the goods, and hammering the rank and file to work harder.

In direct sales distribution you do not necessarily make more money by cramming more product into your catalog pages or onto your retail sales floor. A quality presentation will always outsell “messiness.” We recognize that we make the most profit by selling to our loyal customers. A loyal customer will buy new products with little sales effort and will tell all his friends. A sale to a loyal customer is worth six to eight times more to our bottom line than a sale to another customer.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues

his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. —L. P. Jacks

When there is no crisis, the wise leader or CEO will invent one. Not by crying wolf but by challenging the employees with change.

Tools for Grassroots Activists

I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need.