Patagonia: Blueprint for Green Business

The story of how Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard took his passion for the outdoors and turned it into an amazing business.

By Susan Casey

April 26, 2007

But there was the problem of gear. Yosemite's difficult climbs called for a new generation of tools. Back in Burbank, Chouinard installed a coal forge in his parents' garage and became a self-taught blacksmith, hammering out pitons—three-inch strips of steel used for anchoring climbing ropes. Chouinard's pitons were stronger and more elegant than their predecessors, a triumph of minimalist engineering. He sold them out of the back of his car for $1.50 and tried to live on the proceeds.

It wasn't easy. There were lean years of Dumpster diving and, during one particularly fallow time, subsisting on cat food. There was a summer spent living in an abandoned incinerator. And in 1962, Chouinard was arrested with a climbing buddy in Winslow, Ariz., and spent 18 days in jail for "wandering around aimlessly with no apparent means of support." (Upon release, he was given 30 minutes to get out of town.) But what he describes as the "dirtbag" way—living as close to the wild as possible with as little as possible—never seemed like privation. Rather, this was freedom.

Chouinard managed to keep climbing even when he was drafted and sent to Korea for two years in the 1960s. Upon return he made a series of big-wall ascents that established him as one of the era's greats. He expanded his business, which he now called Chouinard Equipment, and moved it to Ventura—and he met his match: a rock-climbing art student named Malinda Pennoyer. They married in 1970.

Over the years, Chouinard Equipment grew and morphed and existed mainly to fund its owner's wilderness adventures. Malinda threw herself into the work, and in 1972 they branched into clothing, launching a new company called Patagonia. Among its early offerings were rugby shirts, corduroy knickers and boiled-wool mittens. Meanwhile the outdoor industry itself was taking off, with more people doing the kinds of activities that required these clothes.

Which is how Yvon Chouinard, who intended to spend approximately zero days of his life behind a desk, became a businessman. But he and Malinda were crystal clear: This would be business on their terms. It wouldn't release toxins into rivers or cause nervous breakdowns or chase endless growth. It wouldn't make disposable crap that people didn't really need. Anything it produced would be of the highest quality, manufactured in the most responsible way. When the surf was up or the powder wafted down, employees would be where they ought to be: outside. If an employee's child was sick, the parent would also be where he ought to be: at home. They would keep Patagonia privately held and say no to anything that compromised their values.

Scaling the likes of Yosemite's El Capitan, Chouinard had learned big lessons. The biggest was that reaching the summit had nothing to do with where you arrived and everything to do with how you got there. Likewise, he thought, with business: The point was not to focus on making money; focus on doing things right, and the profits would come. And they did.

On a winter Saturday afternoon the Patagonia store on Manhattan's Upper West Side is jammed with shoppers eyeing Houdini full-zip shells, Plush Synchilla hoodies, Micro Puff Polarguard vests and Recycled Capilene underpants. Unlike, say, Abercrombie & Fitch, where anyone over 23 is greeted with a hostile stare, there is no one type of customer here. There are couples pushing double-wide strollers, teenagers and grandparents, and even a woman in high heels clicking across the sustainably harvested Douglas fir floor.

None of them is suiting up for Everest anytime soon, and many would be surprised to hear Chouinard's criteria about what makes the merchandise appealing: "You should be able to wash travel clothes in a sink or a cooking pot, then hang them out to dry in a hut and still look decent for the plane ride home."

It's ironic that although Chouinard detests trendiness, instructs Patagonia designers to ignore the current fashions and tells his customers that "the more you know, the less you need," people often refer to this store, and the other 22 like it, as Patagucci and Pradagonia.

As always, there is plenty of fleece on the shelves. In 1977 the company created its breakthrough product, a jacket made of polyester pile that, unlike natural fibers, repelled moisture while retaining heat. It was stiff and ungainly but worked like a charm in environments where looking odd was preferable to getting hypothermia.

Refinements continued. Working with fabric manufacturer Malden Mills, Patagonia created a finer, softer version called Synchilla in colors like sea-foam green and garnet red. Sales exploded, and the company became known for the "fleece jacket." Later, when Patagonia discovered it could make Synchilla using discarded soda bottles, Chouinard saw a way to reconcile his expanding business with his angst over manufacturing's destructive effects: by conducting an "environmental assessment" of all materials. Could recycled materials be used in a product? Could the product itself be recycled? Which materials caused the most harm to the environment, and which the least?

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