Yvon Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia, a company that has made sustainability its banner, and that even encourages its customers to repair products rather than buy new ones.
Patagonia is a one-of-a-kind company, founded by an unusual character — a mix of climber, surfer, blacksmith and entrepreneur — namely Yvon Chouinard.
"I've been an entrepreneur for almost fifty years, and it's hard for me to say those words — as hard as it would be for someone to admit they're an alcoholic or a lawyer: I've never held that profession in high regard. It is, in fact, the world of business that bears the greatest responsibility for the destruction of nature, the annihilation of many indigenous cultures, an unjust distribution of resources and the pollution of the planet"
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It was precisely to demonstrate that a different kind of commerce is possible that Chouinard founded Patagonia, a clothing and outdoor equipment brand — a sort of experiment to refute the current model of capitalism, which presupposes unlimited and unsustainable growth.
Chouinard's entrepreneurial adventure began when, at the age of nineteen, he purchased a second-hand coal forge, an anvil, and some springs and hammers, and started making hard steel climbing pitons needed to tackle the colossal walls of Yosemite.
By 1970, Chouinard Equipment had become the largest supplier of climbing and mountaineering equipment in the United States. Yet the first environmental dilemma of Chouinard's career was arising: the equipment he was producing was damaging the rock, leaving visible scars across entire cliff faces.
Once he realised this, he did not hesitate to gradually phase out the sale of pitons — his company's best-selling product — in order to protect the mountains. Chouinard and his partner Frost then found an alternative: aluminium nuts that could be wedged into and removed from cracks by hand, and they explained to their customers the environmental dangers posed by pitons.
"I knew I could never enjoy playing by the normal rules of the business world: I wanted to be as different as possible from those pale cadavers in suits and ties I saw in advertisements. If I had to be a businessman I would do it my way, and I needed to be sustained by solid motivations"
In the 1970s Chouinard began selling climbing and trekking clothing, and in 1972 he founded Patagonia. "The name Patagonia evoked a romantic vision of glaciers plunging into fjords, windswept jagged peaks, gauchos and condors."
The company's success grew rapidly, in step with the development of materials that were increasingly durable and had an ever-smaller environmental footprint. Despite exponential growth — in 2014 the company turned over approximately 600 million dollars — the philosophy that led Chouinard to found the brand has remained unchanged.
"All employees need flexible hours so they can go surfing when the waves are right, or skiing when there's snow, or stay home to look after a child with flu," Chouinard wrote in his autobiography, "Let My People Go Surfing"
For more than thirty years, Patagonia has donated one per cent of its revenues to environmental organisations, and has succeeded in spreading this initiative, 1% for the Planet, to other companies as well.
"All of the company's decisions must be made bearing in mind the context of the environmental crisis, and therefore our efforts must be directed at causing no harm, and wherever possible our actions must help to reduce the problem."