Patagonia: Warm and Fuzzy, Like a Fleece

In his uneven new book, “Let My People Go Surfing,” Yvon Chouinard proudly boasts that the outdoor gear company he founded, Patagonia, has managed to “challenge convention wisdom and present a new style of responsible business.” Unlike the stereotypical evil business, Patagonia has managed to do “good things and make a profit without losing its soul,” Chouinard writes. This prophet of responsible capitalism promises to explain how he broke the rules and won.

And the lessons are there. For instance, Chouinard stresses the importance of constant innovation, and he relates how Patagonia adroitly switched its underwear material from odor-retaining polypropylene to washable polyester to stay ahead of the competition. He emphasizes the importance of quality in an era of cheap mass production. And he shows that his company, at least, can treat both its employees and the environment with respect.

The future founders, chairmen, and chief executive officers here on campus would do well to learn a little from Chouinard. Companies do not have to be all about lower marginal costs and higher profits—they can also be about their people and the ecosystem. And if Chouinard’s business model ever sounds dubious or runs contrary to what you learned in Ec 10, just open your closet and take a long look at your Patagonia fleece jacket.

Unfortunately, Chouinard’s nuggets of entrepreneurial wisdom are buried within 260 long pages of hackneyed stories and uninspired one-liners. For each interesting tidbit (managers share the same working space as other employees to promote a sense of equality), Chouinard felt the need to throw in an anecdote (surprise, he thought the air conditioner was a computer) or a hyperbole (employees come to work “on the balls of their feet”).

These rhetorical tics are part of an effort to make the writing conversational. Chouinard tosses in everything from the second person to quips like, “When I die and go to hell, the devil is gong to make me the marketing director for a cola company” and “Get out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.” This folksy tone is stiff and unconvincing.

The book also occasionally reads too much like an advertisement for Patagonia. Admittedly, publicity is one of the intended side effects of devoting an entire volume to dissect one company, and a little self-congratulations is expected. Indeed, since Chouinard is holding Patagonia up as an example for the business world, the company’s success is an integral part of the story—for example, the fact that the growth rate has been a steady five percent is something readers want to know. A list of awards from Working Mother and Fortune magazines, on the other hand, is excessive and detracts from the story of Patagonia’s unorthodox corporate philosophy.

Chouinard divides the book into three separate sections, each of which explores the company’s unique facets. The first, and most interesting, part deals with history. Chouinard gives a short, scatter-shot autobiography that hopscotches across time from one rock climbing adventure to another. The founder is an avid outdoorsman who loves extreme sports. He entered the world of business haphazardly by making and selling climbing equipment. The Patagonia clothing line started after Chouinard discovered a market for corduroy knickers and rugby shirts among mountain climbers.

From this humble beginning, the company has become an international force with sales of $230 million a year. Along the way, there were innovations and successes as well as botched shipments, lawsuits, and other setbacks. The one constant was Chouinard, who has reviled the idea of being an ordinary businessman throughout the years. “I continued to practice my MBA theory of management, management by absence,” he writes, “while I wear-tested our clothing and equipment in the most extreme conditions of the Himalayas and South America.”

Chouinard’s other business philosophies are listed out in the second chunk of the book. There are several for every major aspect of the company, from production design to distribution to human resources, but the maxims are not particularly original: “Does It Fit Our Customer?” “Is It Easy to Care For and Clean?” “Internet” (for product promotion), “Benefits” (for employees).

The guiding principles give way to a small treatise on the environment that dominates the third part of the book. Chouinard clearly worries about human-induced damage to nature, and he points to an array of examples ranging from deforestation to overpopulation to toxins in the water.

“Most of the damage we cause to the planet is a result of our own ignorance,” he laments, and the only solution is to seek out ways to be cleaner and more earth-friendly. Patagonia has had an impressive history of environmental activism, and Chouinard founded an alliance of businesses that donate at least one percent of their revenues to environmental organizations.

This level of concern about the ecosystem is rare in the corporate world, and Chouinard delights in the fact that his company has broken all the accepted molds. Patagonia stands out as one of the few successful exceptions. But if companies start applying the philosophies and lessons in “Let My People Go Surfing,” Patagonia may become a mold of its own.

—Staff writer David Zhou can be reached at dzhou@fas.harvard.edu.