From the best book on business I have read so far:
“Remember, work has to be fun. We value employees who live rich and rounded lives. We run a flexible workplace, and we have ever since we were a blacksmith shop that shut down whenever the waves were six feet, hot and glassy. Our policy has always allowed employees to work flexible hours, as long as the work gets done with no negative impacts on others. A serious surfer doesn’t plan to go surfing next Tuesday at two o’clock. You go surfing when there are waves and the tide and wind are right.”
Welcome to the world of Patagonia. One of my favourite brands, if not number 1. Why? Not because of their surf policy (although I like that a lot), but because of their stance on running a sustainable business. In other words: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” – Yvon Chouinard
I hope you enjoy the below summary of the Patagonia story. I can only hope you do 1 thing after reading my blog: get yourself a copy of their book!
I have not always been a fan of Patagonia, as I simply haven’t even heard about them in the past. Growing up in Austria I did not really see them being present, despite the great outdoors of my home country.
Having bought a Patagonia backpack in Australia though and gone through the experience of repair with the brand – I have become an instant follower. And then of course – there was the book. A book that made me look at the company in more detail.
It is astounding to see a company giving back a $10M USD tax cut to environmental causes. Rose Marcario (CEO) wrote on LinkedIn: “Based on last year’s irresponsible tax cut, Patagonia will owe less in taxes this year. We are responding by putting $10 million back into the planet because our home needs it more than we do.” (read more here)
Fast Company also did an article on it here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90273496/patagonia-is-giving-its-10-million-tax-cut-back-to-the-planet
It does not stop there. Patagonia changed their mission statement to: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” The message could not be more clear. A message derived from learning how to be a sustainable growing company with limited impact to the world around it.
Hard learnings – which found their way into a book dedicated to all the employees at the company. A fascinating read and the book I like to gift the most. It is not really about surfing, nor is it purely about Patagonia. It explores the history of the company paired with the learnings the 80year old founder Yvon has taken away from the transformation process. A are truly inspiring piece of work.
Have a brief listen on Yvon reading the prologue of the revised version:
https://soundcloud.com/patagonia1973/let-my-people-go-surfing-prologue
In an exclusive interview with Fast Company, founder Yvon Chouinard talks about how the company is taking further steps on their journey. Read the very insightful article here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90280950/exclusive-patagonia-is-in-business-to-save-our-home-planet
Who else thinks about making Wetsuits without Neoprene, tries to plant cotton in India without the use of pesticides and – my absolute favourite – tries to repair everything you have bought and at the same time asks you to buy less…?
A lot to take in, I am sure. To me – Patagonia’s strategy also very much relates to the field of marketing.
I give you a nice example by Alex Weller: “You can’t reverse into a mission and values through marketing. The organisations that are struggling with this are probably the ones that are thinking about marketing first.”
Despite having started with a direct mail-order business and sending the catalogue to its customers, Patagonia does not do a lot of advertising today. Aside from campaigns aimed at its core sports communities or when it has a story to tell, like fair trade sourcing.
According to the European Head of Marketing, Patagonia is focused on “building a movement”. Based on values. “It’s community building and we’re very much focused on doing that socially online, physically in the real world and we invest as little as we can in paying to talk about what we do and who we are”
According to the one of the thought-leaders of modern marketing – Seth Godin – Patagonia is executing on a very successful strategy. They start with the problem they want to solve first — not the solution. Saving our planet. Then they look for opportunities to create tension – like asking you not to buy their goods. They keep sharing their story – and don’t change it.
Patagonia’s Black Friday policy is an example that aligns to this overall positioning:
“On Black Friday in 2016, Patagonia donated 100% of sales to grassroots organizations working to create positive change for the planet in their own backyards. We’re determined to use every means at our disposal to defend our world’s climate, air, water and soil. In these divisive times, protecting what we all hold in common is more important than ever before.” You can read the CEO letter here.
Patagonia has positioned itself successfully as the grass-roots eco friendly clothing company, despite other retail giants in this space like The North Face. Another great read on these 2 and their positioning is here.
Both retailers are hugely successful with their strategy: The North Face reported annual revenue of $2.3bn in 2016. Patagonia is smaller, but growing more rapidly. The company had sales of $800m in 2016, twice as much as in 2010.
I can only hope that this continues to grow beyond just Patagonia. The 1% for the planet initiative makes me think that there is more success out there for this type of business. You can read more about them here: http://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/who-we-are/business-directory
And me? I will change my Neoprene wetsuit for a non-rubber based Yulex suite from Patagonia. Not now though. Once it needs to. After all, I do not really need to buy anything from them – right now – and that is fine.
Further material:
Listen to a great podcast from ‘How I built this’ on Patagonia here: https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=504852483:505017995
