Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

“I learned at an early age that it’s better to invent your own game; then you can always be a winner. I found my games in the ocean, creeks, and hillsides surrounding Los Angeles.”

The apparent success of this outcome belies the loneliness of these solo ventures. Chouinard’s experience in Burbank, California, which isn’t built for small, French-speaking boys like him, alienates him from his peers. Consequently, he finds a sense of belonging in in the outdoors, a home he keeps returning to into his eighties.

“I drove to Wyoming in my 1940 Ford, which I had rebuilt in auto shop class. I remember the great feeling I had driving alone through the Nevada desert, in hundred-degree temperatures, passing by the Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs stopped by the side of the road with their hoods up, overheating.”

This memorable experience of schadenfreude as a 16-year-old is a formative lesson in the superiority of simpler technology that one knows well. Chouinard in his old, rebuilt Ford sails smoothly through extreme conditions while others with newer cars are waylaid by their cars’ ostensibly more advanced constructions. Although he goes onto embrace new technologies in his life and his companies, Chouinard retains a piece of this luddism in his simple-is-better philosophy.

“Yet we never entertained the thought of calling our parents or friends for help. Climbing had taught us to be self-reliant.”

Chouinard and his fellow vagabond are jailed for vagrancy, and yet they remain committed to their self-imposed independence. For Chouinard and his friends, the difficulty and misfortune of their itinerant climbing lifestyle are proof of its value. They take it as a point of pride to test themselves against nature without resorting to the safety nets in conventional life.

“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!”

While quality later becomes a matter of integrity and authenticity, it begins as a practical safety concern. The type of product Chouinard Equipment makes—climbing equipment—has a built-in requirement of quality that carries over into Patagonia’s commitment to quality in products further removed from life and death. That in the early days of both companies Chouinard and his friends are the main users of their equipment habituates them to design and manufacture as if for themselves, even when they aren’t the end users.

“Studying Zen has taught me to simplify; to simplify yields a richer result. The rock climber becomes a master when he can leave his big wall gear at the base, when he so perfects his skill that he can climb the wall free, relying only on his skill and the features of the rock.”

Ironically, Chouinard’s belief in mastery as a process of replacing unnecessary technological support with skill is at odds with Patagonia’s need to sell more technology—in the form of technical clothing—in order to make a profit. He finds the resolution to this contradiction in the marketing of this simplicity. The mastery comes in the development of products that perform their designated function with increasingly fewer components. Just as the clean lines of the rock inspire a desire for mastery of climbing, so, too, may the clean lines of a perfectly constructed rain jacket inspire a desire for another mastery.

“‘There is a word for it, and the word is clean. Climbing with only nuts and runners for protection is clean climbing. Clean because the rock is left unaltered by the passing climber. Clean because nothing is hammered into the rock and then hammered back out, leaving the rock scarred and the next climber’s experience less natural. Clean because the climber’s protection leaves little trace of his ascension. Clean is climbing the rock without changing it; a step closer to organic climbing for the natural man.’”

The words of Sierra climber Doug Robinson in the first Chouinard Equipment catalog in 1972 express the desire to become one with nature, to become the natural man. This influential essay embeds this desire in the ethos of Chouinard Equipment and later Patagonia: This same desire motivates the goal Patagonia establishes much later to become net-zero, that is, to become like nature. It also infects the entire American climbing community with this desire—months after its publication, Patagonia’s removable chocks have all but entirely replaced its (and other companies’) rock-damaging pitons.

“[O]ne day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time. It was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious. I also knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business; I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from those pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.”

In this crucial moment, Chouinard starts down the path of innovating a new model of business that he can believe in. Just as he learned as a kid it was better to create his own games, he realizes that he has the opportunity to create a business in his image. His vow to reject conventional business foreshadows the nontraditional innovation that Patagonia later becomes known for.

“We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two steps at a time. We needed to be surrounded by friends who could dress whatever way they wanted, even be barefoot. We all needed to have flextime to surf the waves when they were good, or ski the powder after a big snowstorm, or stay home and take care of a sick child. We needed to blur that distinction between work and play and family.”

Chouinard paints a picture of work radically different from the typical one to illustrate just how different he wanted his company to be. Instead of work, what he describes sounds more like a vacation with friends and family. This indicates his longstanding desire to blend work and life, to inject the vitality of life into work to save himself and his friends from the drudgery of losing eight hours a day to something they aren’t passionate about.

“I had never really done ice climbing before, and they gave me a 30-second lesson in crampons and ice-ax use. At one point, we were going across a very steep patch of black ice, and if you slipped, you would’ve gone about 1,000 feet. I said to Yvon [Chouinard], ‘We should rope up here,’ and he said, ‘No way—if you go, then I go, and I don’t want to do that. This is like catching a taxi in New York on a rainy day: It’s every man for himself.’ It’s been helpful to me to be [Yvon’s] friend…. He makes me think about things in new ways.”

The words of NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw—a member of Chouinard’s “Do Boys” climbing troupe—reveal the extreme of Chouinard’s belief in self-reliance. Chouinard views self-reliance as a crucial principal of the outdoors. While Chouinard is seemingly unconcerned for his friend’s life, the wisdom Chouinard’s words contain is that ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves. Just as Brokaw was responsible for preparing himself for the trip and needed to face the consequences of not doing so instead of pawning them off on Chouinard, we must all face the consequences of our actions in a similarly stark way. It’s only by doing so that we’ll be able to realize that we’re not insulated from the effects of our actions in the way we think we are. For Brokaw, the mountain provided particularly immediate feedback illustrating this point.

“It’s often a greater risk to phase in products because you lose the advantage of being first with a new idea.”

Chouinard’s commitment to providing the best-quality products proves time and time again that adhering to this commitment actually makes for smarter business. While it’s difficult not to milk a profitable product for every dollar before phasing in its successor—as some in Patagonia want to with the highly profitable polypropylene before replacing it with functionally Capilene— this practice of immediate replacement in fact proves savvy. This finding fits into Chouinard’s broader theory that doing the right thing is often the more profitable decision. The implication is that the thing holding conventional business back from becoming more socially or environmentally responsible isn’t financial pressure but the ingrained thinking that it’s not possible for the moral choice to be more profitable than the immoral one.

“[W]e slowly became aware that uphill battles fought by small, dedicated groups of people to save patches of habitat could yield significant results.”

A formative lesson in activism for Patagonia’s upper management comes in their success saving the Ventura River from a proposed development. That they not only save the river but restore it to its natural state makes them realize the efficacy of small-scale environmental remediation. This realization goes onto inform Patagonia’s philanthropic policy of only donating to grassroots environmental nonprofits.

“I said I was worried about what would happen to the company if I sold out. ‘So maybe you’re kidding yourself,’ he said, ‘about why you’re in business.’”

Chouinard’s conversation with the business consultant Michael Kami forces him to confront the false story he is telling himself about his reason for staying in business. Kami’s blunt interrogation of Chouinard’s explanation provides the outsider’s perspective Chouinard needs to understand what he wants Patagonia to be. This meeting and Chouinard’s subsequent reflection and realization of his real reason for staying in business is one of the most crucial moments in the company’s history because it clarifies its raison d’être.

“Our own company had exceeded its resources and limitations; we had become dependent, like the world economy, on growth we could not sustain. But as a small company we couldn’t ignore the problem and wish it away. We were forced to rethink our priorities and institute new practices. We had to start breaking the rules.”

Chouinard frequently employs analogies between Patagonia and the economy and between the economy and nature. Here, he establishes Patagonia as a microcosm of the world economy. Just as the mountain removed the safety net of civilization for Tom Brokaw, forcing him to confront the consequences of his unpreparedness, Patagonia’s small size forces it to confront its endemic problems in a way that the global economy’s size prevents.

“Doing risk sports had taught me another important lesson: Never exceed your limits. You push the envelope, and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. The same is true for a business. The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to ‘have it all,’ the sooner it will die. It was time to apply a bit of Zen philosophy to our business.” 

Chouinard’s business philosophy is largely informed by his personal experiences in the outdoors. He believes that the rules he lives by in nature should apply to his business because nature unfailingly reveals what is conducive to survival and what isn’t. In contrast to the typical analogy made between business and the animal kingdom—that in both, power wins—Chouinard takes a broader view, showing that nature checks destructive and reckless behavior. 

“I knew, after thirty-five years, why I was in business. True, I wanted to give money to environmental causes. But even more, I wanted to create in Patagonia a model other businesses could look to in their own searches for environmental stewardship and sustainability, just as our pitons and ice axes were models for other equipment manufacturers.”

Chouinard finally realizes his company’s raison d’être after consulting with Michael Kami. Commitments to modeling innovation and to educating multiply Patagonia’s environmentalism, spreading its message farther than philanthropy alone could. This raison d’être is Chouinard’s central innovation in business: repurposing a company as primarily a tool to model and propagate a set of values rather than as a tool to reap profit. This infusion of activism into business is Patagonia’s signature achievement.

“Patagonia clothes should be beautiful, and they can be art. Fashion is happening only now, and art is timeless.” 

Chouinard’s desire for Patagonia to be more than a conventional business manifests in multiple ways. His desire for its clothing to be beautiful, while apparently an aesthetic desire, is actually a functional one: He believes that the height of function is achieved in simplicity and that that simplicity is beautiful. His claim that Patagonia’s clothes can be art because they can be timeless reflects a desire to separate Patagonia products from the trend-driven realm of fashion and distinguish it in consumers’ eyes as a different kind of company.

“In order to tell our whole story, we need the customers’ undivided attention. Our customers are readers, and the catalog was the primary means of communicating our stories. A catalog has the advantage of self-containment and mobility, of providing surprises as the customer turns the page.

The first goal of the catalog is to share and encourage a particular philosophy of life, of what undergirds the image. The basic tenets of that philosophy are a deep appreciation for the environment and a strong motivation to help solve the environmental crisis; a passionate love for the natural world; a healthy skepticism toward authority; a love for difficult, human-powered sports that require practice and mastery; a disdain for motorized sports like snowmobiling or Jet Skiing; a bias for whacko, often self-deprecating humor; a respect and taste for real adventure (defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive—and certainly not as the same person); and a belief that less is more (in design and in consumption).

The catalog is our bible for each selling season. Every other medium we use to tell our story—from the website, to hangtags, to retail displays, to videos—builds from the catalog’s base and from its pictorial and editorial standards.”

Chouinard envisions the Patagonia catalog as representing an entire way of life shared by its employees and core customers. This culture elevates Patagonia to more than just a company, distinguishing it from other brands. The self-contained, mail-order catalog fosters a sense of both community and exclusivity: Ordering the catalog means joining this community and separating from the rush of consumer life.

“We have shown, and do show, climbers picnicking on the hood of a rusted Chevy at the base of a climb, travelers debarking from African Queen boats, a gone-to-seed fishing cabin in Belize, a euphoric skier rising from a face plant in fresh powder, a Galápagos tortoise tearing apart a pile jacket by a tent-side laundry, a sculpture made of trash on a glacier above Chamonix, weary sailors under deck on a Transpac boat, a mechanic greasing a ball joint under a road-worn truck, a marine biologist banding a bird in the field, Julia Butterfly Hill guarding her redwood, and skiers at a back bowl camp ‘watching’ an ice sculpture TV.”

In Patagonia’s catalog photos, originality is the key to the authenticity that distinguishes its brand. The emphasis is on the candid, the unexpectedly spectacular, and the aesthetically mundane. Constructing this authentic image from photographs submitted by real Patagonia customers enhances the sense that the company is a community, making even those who don’t appear in those pages feel that they could. This use of real customers makes the lifestyle Patagonia markets feel more attainable than if it used professional models. All of these things establish a distinctive image that separates Patagonia from its competitors.

“If we wish to lead corporate America by example, we have to be profitable. No company will respect us, no matter how much money we give away or how much publicity we receive for being one of the ‘100 Best Companies,’ if we are not profitable. It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise, you’re just crazy.” 

In order to succeed in his goal of influencing other companies to adopt environmental policies, Chouinard has to concede to the central value of conventional business: profit. This point reflects Chouinard’s pragmatism in blending disparate elements to attain his goal. It also shows that his optimism in trying to change business doesn’t come from a place of naivete but rather from his confidence in his ability to demonstrate that businesses can be both profitable and environmental.

“[A] wise leader knows that you also move when everything is going too well; everyone is laid-back, lazy, and happy. If you don’t move now, then you may not be able to move when the real crisis happens. Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘In pleasant peace and security, how quickly the soul in a man begins to die.’”

Chouinard believes that a leader’s role in a business is to stimulate constant change. In the rapidly changing business world, companies that cannot adapt—i.e., that are unpracticed in changing—will fail, just as species in a rapidly changing environment that cannot adapt will die. Chouinard applies the falconry term yarak to this ideal state a leader should keep a company in, meaning the state of hyper-alertness and motivating hunger perfectly suited for hunting.

“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.”

The reason Patagonia functions like a healthy environment and conventional businesses don’t is that the latter don’t factor in the environmental cost of their production, whereas Patagonia does to a large extent. By asking the Five Whys, Patagonia brings itself into contact with the consequences of its activities in a way that environmentally irresponsible companies don’t. Collapsing the separation between action and consequence is crucial to ensuring that a business functions like an ecosystem. This is because in nature nothing can separate one part of an ecosystem from another, whereas in civilization it is possible to artificially separate parts such that it doesn’t appear as if each impacts the other. 

“That’s why our earth tax, 1 percent of our net sales, goes primarily to them. I’ve learned from a lifetime of being outdoors that nature loves diversity. It hates monoculture and centralization. A thousand activist groups, each working on a specific problem that the members are passionate about, can accomplish much more than a bloated organization or government.”

Chouinard takes another page out of nature’s book in his approach to philanthropy. Behind this approach is also his management philosophy (and scientifically supported fact) that offices of under 100 people divided into working groups of four to seven show higher levels of productivity, creativity, and happiness than larger offices with bigger groups. Chouinard also distrusts large organizations because bureaucracy insulates people from their actions, eliminating the accountability essential to successful functioning.

“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. Which means we could reverse the trends of global warming simply by changing the way we farm and ranch.” 

Chouinard again shows his willingness to combine different philosophies to best attain his goals: While he embraces new technologies in his clothing because they simplify the end result, he also retains the luddite’s view that modern problems require traditional solutions. Ignoring farfetched ideas of vast and complex carbon capture technology, Chouinard finds the same solution in a much simpler practice: a reversion to traditional, regenerative farming methods.