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

by Yvon Chouinard

Those days were the height of the cheap fossil fuel age. You could buy a car for twenty dollars, gasoline was twenty-five cents a gallon, camping was free, and you could get a part-time job anytime. The land was fat and we took full advantage of it. In the fall of 1962, coming back from climbing on the East Coast, Chuck Pratt and I were arrested for riding a freight train in Winslow, Arizona, and we spent eighteen days in jail. The charge was “wandering around aimlessly with no apparent means of support.” By the time we got out, we had each lost twenty pounds on the jailhouse diet of Wonder Bread, beans, and oatmeal. We had only fifteen cents between us, it was snowing, and the cops gave us a half hour to get out of town. Yet we never entertained the thought of calling our parents or friends for help. Climbing had taught us to be self-reliant; there were no rescue teams in those days.

Demand for my gear grew until I couldn’t keep up making it by hand, so I started using more sophisticated tools and dies and machinery. I went into partnership with Tom and Doreen Frost. Tom was an aeronautical engineer who had a keen sense of design and esthetics. Doreen handled the bookkeeping and business end of things. During the nine years that the Frosts and I were partners, we redesigned and improved just about every climbing tool, making each one stronger, lighter, simpler, and more functional. Quality control was always foremost in our minds, because if a tool failed, it could kill someone, and since we were our own best customers, there was a good chance it would be us! Our guiding principle of design stemmed from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French aviator: Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over drafts and blue-prints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally a...

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.

Then I began to see rapid changes in the world, and more and more I came home with stories of environmental and social devastation. In Africa, forests and grassland were disappearing as the populations grew. Global warming was melting glaciers that had been part of the continent’s climbing history. The emergence of AIDS and Ebola coincided with the clear-cutting of forests and the wholesale pursuit of bush meat, such as infected chimpanzees and fruit bats. On a kayaking trip to the Russian Far East, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I found that the Russians had destroyed much of their country trying to keep up with the United States in the arms race. Their oil, mineral, and timber extraction had devastated the land, and failed industrial efforts had contaminated cities and farmlands. They were eating their seed corn. Closer to home, I saw the relentless paving over of Southern California’s remaining coastline and hillsides. In Wyoming, where I had spent summers for thirty years, I saw fewer wild animals each year, caught smaller fish, and suffered through weeks of debilitating, record-setting ninety-degree heat. But most environmental devastation the eye doesn’t see. I learned more by reading about the rapid loss of topsoil and groundwater, about the clear-cutting of tropical forests and the growing list of endangered plant and animal and bird species, and about people in the once-pristine Arctic who are now being warned not to eat local mammals and fish because of...

shift

What’s the antidote? Making a dent in our collective consumption footprint will require shared responsibility between companies that make things and customers who buy them—but businesses must act independently. At Patagonia, we work hard to make high-quality, responsibly sourced clothing that lasts for years and can be repaired—and we guarantee it for life. Our Reno repair facility did more than 40,000 individual repairs in 2015, and we’ve trained our retail staff to handle the simple repair jobs (which total thousands more). We have partnered with iFixit to publish more than forty free repair guides for Patagonia products on our website. We go to great lengths to provide our customers with opportunities to fix their gear themselves, find it a new home, or recycle it if necessary. We ask our customers to use tools we provide to decrease the environmental impact of their stuff over time by buying only what they need, repairing what they have, finding ways to reuse items, and recycling when it’s truly time. But this is far from a trend. While some companies like Ricoh, DeWalt, Caterpillar, and Lenovo have made repair and remanufacturing a staple of their business model, most companies still make cheap stuff that breaks and must be replaced. Customers conditioned to seeking out the best price buy into this model and keep the cycle going. And too often, products come without repair instructions—and in extreme cases companies actively thwart repairs by inventing new kinds of pr...

repair

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 competition, and can’t be sold on its merits.

amazing

Steve House is an internationally acclaimed alpinist who among his list of accomplishments did a first ascent with Vince Anderson of the Rupal Face on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan. He has written several books, the last of which defines the training needed to accomplish the level of alpinism that he pursues.

find and read

Michael Kami refers to this team approach as concurrent, as opposed to assembly-line manufacturing, in which responsibility for one part of the process is handed off in stages to the next in line. A concurrent approach brings all participants together at the beginning of the design phase. As Dr. Kami points out, only about 10 percent of a product’s costs are incurred during the design phase, but 90 percent of the costs are irrevocably committed. The ongoing relationship beyond the design phase is critical too. Builders have been known to make on-site changes without knowing the architect’s intentions, and sewing contractors can easily compromise a rain jacket’s performance by altering construction of a seam to fit their own work habits and practices.

designer and producer: concurrent

I think of Patagonia as an ecosystem, with its vendors and customers as an integral part of that system. A problem anywhere in the system eventually affects the whole, and this gives everyone an overriding responsibility to the health of the whole organism. It also means that anyone, low on the totem pole or high, inside the company or out, can contribute significantly to the health of the company and to the integrity and value of our products.

systems point of view

You have to be a full partner. You have to make sure that your suppliers and contractors have the necessary knowledge and tools to get the job done to your design standards. Getting to that point is not a problem if you and your working partners are mutually committed to the same standards.

The mail-order catalog has always been our “soapbox” and enables us to transmit information about Patagonia’s philosophies and products directly to people’s homes and businesses anywhere in the world. Mail order actively works with our retail stores, dealers, and the international network to support companywide efforts to develop and retain loyal Patagonia customers. My first principle of mail order argues that “selling” ourselves and our philosophy is equally important to selling product. Telling the Patagonia story and educating the Patagonia customer on layering systems, on environmental issues, and on the business itself are as much the catalog’s mission as is selling the products. This has several practical implications, including how we measure the success of a catalog, how we format the information, and how we allocate space. Above its value as a sales tool, the catalog is first of all an image piece, presenting the company’s values and obligations.

selling the principles behind the operation

Third, it becomes apparent that the global economy is not sustainable. It’s completely dependent on burning up cheap fossil fuel. Shipping goods by rail or by boat uses 400 BTUs per ton for each mile shipped. Truck freight uses more than 3,300 BTUs per ton, and air cargo uses 21,670 BTUs, to move a ton of goods one mile.

externalities

Philosophy of Architecture The philosophy of clothing design is really no different from that for other products, including buildings. The following are guidelines we use in creating a new retail store or office building that will optimize esthetics, function, and responsibility. Don’t build a new building unless it’s absolutely necessary. The most responsible thing to do is to buy used buildings, construction materials, and furniture. Try to save old or historic buildings from being torn down. Any structural changes should honor the historical integrity of the building. We rectify misguided “improvements” made by previous tenants and strip away fake modern facades, ending up we hope with a building that is a “gift to the neighborhood.” If you can’t be retro, build quality. The esthetic life expectancy of the building should be as long as the physical material’s life span. Use recycled, and recyclable, materials like steel girders, studs, remilled wood, and straw bales. Install fixtures from waste materials like pressed sunflower hulls and agricultural waste. Anything that is built should be repairable and easily maintained. Buildings should be constructed to last as long as possible, even if this initially involves a higher price. Each store must be unique. The heroes, sports, history, and natural features of each area should be reflected and honored. —Y.C.

for anything or everything

any building we occupy must honor its surrounding history and culture and must be prepared to last another hundred years.

amen

Modern industrial forestry provides some of the best examples of nonsustainable agriculture. Modern forestry is considered agriculture, the reason why the U.S. Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture and not the Department of the Interior. Our forests are treated as crops to be harvested, then replanted or allowed to regenerate on their own, to be cut again and replanted ad infinitum, a so-called renewable resource. Clear-cutting is the most cost-effective method of harvest, and it gets rid of the undesirable undergrowth and low-value trees like the hemlock and alder. Then the land can be burned over and replanted with a monocrop like Douglas fir. The trouble is, nature doesn’t like monocrops. Clear-cutting, with its attendant road building (subsidized by the Forest Service), causes erosion, which silts up the rivers and destroys the salmon runs. The second-growth trees produce lower-quality wood and are more susceptible to diseases, such as the virus that is threatening Douglas fir farms in the Northwest. A third crop requires massive amounts of fertilizers, and it is doubtful that a fourth crop could even be grown—hardly the definition of a renewable resource. Much of what I know about achieving any measure of sustainability in an economic activity, I learned in trying to grow my own garden. The land where I live happens to be part of the 90 percent of the earth where you can’t do agriculture except for some limited grazing. My soil is a heavy, impenetrable...

land

A successful, long-lived, and productive company like Patagonia could be compared, on the most basic level, with a healthy environment, simply in the fact that both are composed of various elements that must function together in some kind of balance in order for the whole system to work. If we fill the earth’s atmosphere with excess carbon dioxide and that causes a global rise in temperature, it also affects the oceans, forests, prairies, and everything and everyone living in those places. Correspondingly, if I were to change drastically one department at Patagonia without considering the effects on the rest of the company, the result would be chaos. No businessman in his right mind would, for example, intentionally cripple his accounting department without thought of the consequences to the rest of the company. Yet that’s exactly what’s being done to the environment; entire ecosystems are being destroyed or “converted” without consideration to the overall health of the planet. Unfortunately, most of the environmental damage being done by business is the result of large corporations that aren’t operating under the philosophy of sustainability, either for themselves or for the environment. They’re applying their own short-term business principles to a natural system that can operate only in the long term.

The root of the problem is that neither government nor business uses full-cost accounting in its use of resources. In fact, the government’s indicator for the health of the economy is the GDP (gross domestic product), which measures the economic health of a nation by the value of the quantity of goods produced, not by the cleanliness and availability of air and water, the health of soil, the biodiversity of ecosystems, or the temperature of oceans—the elements that support and sustain the natural resources necessary to build products these corporations sell. Rather, it has become a race to squeeze the last drop of oil out of the earth at all costs including the potential and too often realized risks of hazardous spills, contamination of nearby aquifers, and toxic air pollution.

measuring externalities

To expect corporations to do anything other than amass wealth is to ignore our culture’s entire history, current practices, current power structure, and system of rewards. It is to ignore everything we know about behavior modification: we reward those investing in or running corporations for what they do, and can therefore expect them to do it again. To expect those who hide behind corporate shields to do otherwise is delusional.

If you want to die the richest man, then just stay sharp. Keep investing. Don’t spend anything. Don’t eat any capital. Don’t have a good time. Don’t get to know yourself. Don’t give anything away. Keep it all. Die as rich as you can. But you know what? I heard an expression that puts it well: There’s no pocket on that last shirt. —Susie Tompkins Buell

Research has proved that the green revolution in agriculture with its reliance on GMO seeds, chemical fertilizer, insecticides, and unsustainable use of water has temporarily allowed us to feed more people, but it is not sustainable. It comes at the cost of destroying topsoil; poisoning the sky, land, and water; displacing the small farmer; and adding carbon emissions—and in the end it produces less food per acre than more natural farming. Industrial agriculture continues to be the existing paradigm because of massive government subsidies to farmers and the fossil fuel industry. Modern food production is one of the main culprits in the destruction of our planet. With close to 30 percent of the world’s habitable land and 70 percent of its water used for pasture and farming,23, 24 it’s doubtful there’s any other industry with such deep and widespread impact.

agriculture

The traditional assumption has been that once land is degraded, it is degraded forever. Some farmers have found, however, that not only is restoration possible, but it can happen very quickly. By ditching the plow and the spray plane, and using techniques such as cover-cropping, composting, crop rotation, and holistic grazing, farmers can create productive healthy soils within just a couple of years. These soils require less water, produce higher yields during drought, and generally cost less to farm than their modern agriculture counterparts.28, 29 It turns out that healthy soils also sequester carbon, a lot of carbon. Cover crops and regenerative grazing techniques increase photosynthesis, which sucks carbon dioxide out of the air and sinks it in the ground. The switch from chemicals to compost feeds the bacteria and fungi that aid the process, and nondisruptive no-till systems keep the carbon locked in.30, 31 Estimates vary, but even the low end of the spectrum suggests that a global switch to regenerative land husbandry would sequester our total annual emissions back underground.32 Which means we could reverse the trends of global warming simply by changing the way we farm and ranch.

ag is the key

Working with the Land Institute and the University of Minnesota, we are currently developing several ways to use Kernza grains in food. We are also working with Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco and Steve Jones of the Bread Lab in the Skagit Valley on other perennial wheats and the most American of grains: buckwheat.

looking ahead

And I believe that revolution starts, to paraphrase David Brower, by “turning around and taking a step forward.” In other words, we need to go back to the old ways of farming, with organic practices, biodynamics, and crop rotation leading the way. Farmers in Brazil used green manures and legume cover crops to double their yields of corn and wheat. Scientists at the Washington State Bread Lab and the Land Institute in Kansas are rediscovering perennial wheat and other heritage grains that require less water and little topsoil disruption. A recent study by Technische Universitat Munchen showed that organic farms emit around 20 percent less greenhouse gases per yield unit than conventional farms.34 The Rodale Institute found that organically managed soils can actually sequester more carbon than they release.35 They found that if all cropland were converted to the regenerative model, it would absorb 40 percent of annual carbon dioxide releases, and if ranching lands were to do the same, those lands would absorb an additional 71 percent.36 As we confront global climate change, increasing drought, and a diminishing supply of fossil fuels, it’s clearly time to rethink our agricultural practices.

looking ahead

We need to go back to the old ways of fishing, too, with ancient, selective-harvest techniques. In the case of salmon, where healthy, sustainable populations mingle with endangered stocks on the high seas, we can choose to harvest from areas where we know exactly which fish we’re catching. We can work to take down dams, stop open-water fish farms, and wean ourselves from destructive hatchery practices. Free-flowing rivers with naturally abundant salmon runs will produce more fish at lower cost and preserve the riparian ecology at the same time. We need to go back to the old ways of raising animals for food as well. Long before industrial feedlots, growth hormones, and antibiotics came to dominate the livestock industry, there were simpler, healthier ways to produce meat for the table. Free-range, organic livestock produces better, more nutritious meat, creates fewer greenhouse gases, and allows animals to live a more natural, dignified life. In some cases, such as freely roaming bison, the animals themselves actually contribute to the recovery of wild ecosystems. If we go back to these old ways, we win on three levels: First, we produce food that tastes better and is better for us. Second, we reduce unemployment—a lot of the conflict around the world has, as its source, the lack of meaningful work for generations of people displaced by technology. And finally, organic agriculture and responsible harvest and husbandry represent our best shot at saving the planet.

real sustainable

With the average American reading at only an eighth-grade level2 and nearly 50 percent of Americans not believing in evolution,3 we have the government we deserve.

A certain void exists now with the decline of so many good institutions that used to guide our lives, such as social clubs, religions, athletic teams, neighborhoods, and nuclear families, all of which had a unifying effect. They gave us a sense of belonging to a group, working toward a common goal. People still need an ethical center, a sense of their role in society. A company can help fill that void if it shows its employees and its customers that it understands its own ethical responsibilities and then can help them respond to their own.

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.