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Overview

Business is not all about growth and consumption. Patagonia has found a way to create great products while still being environmentally friendly. There are many entrepreneurs who want to do things differently, but they don’t know how.

Patagonia is a company that makes outdoor clothing and gear. It’s also progressive, environmental-friendly, has a great culture and leads the world in honest marketing. Here’s how it started and why it stopped selling one of its most popular products. You’ll learn why staff hours change depending on surfing conditions, too.

Big Idea #1: Chouinard was inspired by his love of climbing and the outdoors, so he started a company.

It’s possible that you’ve shopped at Patagonia before without knowing who Yvon Chouinard is. However, if you want to know why the company has been so successful, it all starts with him. His story begins in Maine where he was born in 1938 and then moved to California when his family decided they wanted a change of scenery. He felt like an outsider and found comfort in mountain climbing which only intensified after college when he taught himself how to make climbing gear out of blacksmithing because it was cheaper than buying new equipment.

Chouinard was unhappy with the gear that he saw in stores because most of it came from European companies. They designed equipment based on the idea that climbing mountains is a battle against nature, and they built tools to help conquer the mountain.

Chouinard had been making his own climbing gear for a while, and he was good at it. He started selling his equipment to others, and soon enough he was expanding his business. His tools were expensive, but they appealed to the outdoorsy types because they were much lighter than standard equipment, stronger than other products on the market and more functional in many ways.

Chouinard didn’t make much profit at first, but he was only interested in making enough money to continue climbing, surfing and fishing. He eventually hired some friends as employees and made just enough money to continually improve their products.

Chouinard Equipment was the biggest supplier of climbing equipment in 1970. Even so, improvements needed to be made. Chouinard saw that pitons were being left dug into mountains everywhere and decided to phase them out despite their popularity. His company would only produce removable aluminum chocks from then on.

Getting rid of a top-selling item can be detrimental to the company, but Chouinard was just getting started.

Big Idea #2: Chouinard did not want to grow his business, but he had no choice.

Climbing is not everyone’s passion, so selling climbing tools is a niche market. Chouinard knew he needed to expand his business if it was going to be successful.

In order to complement the small profits of equipment sales, Chouinard decided to start a new company and call it Patagonia.

However, the principles remained the same. The tools were simple, strong and well designed. The clothes were also simple, strong and functional.

Patagonia’s first product was a rugby shirt that ended up being late and cheaply made. As a result, the company lost money on its investment, so it considered getting an interest-bearing loan from someone who would charge them 28 percent. Luckily, Chouinard and his colleagues had enough savings to avoid taking out this loan. This taught him two lessons: he needed to be more of a businessman if Patagonia was going to succeed, but he also didn’t want things at the company to become boring or stale because of his new focus on business matters.