We're working, what fun!

Sidika Sehgal

Turning a hobby into a business and also making a profit can go together. As a rock climber, Yvon Chouinard made a niche for himself by selling pitons. So popular were his pitons that he ultimately needed a team to help him out. It was the beginning of an enterprise built on the insousiance of outdoor passions. People were doing their own thing and serving a growing tribe of customers. Then came Patagonia, an iconic clothing brand with yet more outdoorsy appeal.

Let My People Go Surfing is a candid account of Chouinard's business style or perhaps the lack of it. When Chouinard’s first company, Chouinard Equipment, came about,  he was the only employee for many years. The friends he hired were rock climbers, surfers and skiers who shared a love of being outdoors. The unsaid understanding among this rag tag group was that if the tide was right or if there was powder snow, they’d shut shop for a few hours and go surfing.

Years later, when Chouinard started Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company, this policy stayed. The policy was called “Let My People Go Surfing”, which gives Chouinard’s book its title.

Patagonia did many things differently and it stemmed from their philosophy of doing more good than harm, of doing business ethically. This core idea touched every part of the business — from how they produced their clothes to their internal policies for their employees to the steps they took to undo the environmental damage the business caused. 

In building their supply chain, they looked for partners who shared their commitment towards doing as little environmental damage as possible. But finding such partners wasn’t easy. So, they’d help them adopt better practices and educate them about the benefits of doing so. For example, they worked with farmers to encourage them to grow organic cotton and with dye manufacturers to run the water through cleaners before dumping it into the river. It cost more, but Patagonia was happy to pay the price.

Chouinard knew that despite these efforts, the business was not “sustainable”, and the best they could do was to minimize the harm they did to the planet. He imposed an earth tax on Patagonia which pledged one percent of their sales to small civil society organizations that worked on climate change.

Their marketing philosophy was just as unique. They rarely paid for ads because they didn’t want customers who wanted Patagonia clothes. They wanted customers who needed their products for a hike or a rock climbing expedition. It was almost as if Patagonia didn’t want to sell more — they encouraged their customers to bring back a torn pair of pants or shoes with worn out soles and the company would repair it for them so that they didn’t have to buy a new pair.

It’s hard to make sense of Patagonia encouraging customers to only buy what they need and wear what they buy for a long time when most clothing brands want their customers to be endlessly stuck in the wear-and-throw loop and buy more. The assumption is that this is the only way to grow a business, but Patagonia shows otherwise. Their continuing success is a testament to the fact that there isn’t a choice to be made between what’s good for the business and what’s good for the customer.

And Patagonia combined this with a healthy work culture. Chouinard’s advice is simple but difficult for companies to practise: “treat your employees right, and train them to treat other people right.” It was one of those rare companies that offered parental leave.