Higher Ground

Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard Is In Business To Serve The Earth, Not Wall Street

- Emily Stifler Wolfe

In a 1972 catalog for Chouinard Equipment, future Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and his then climbing and business partner, Tom Frost, explained why they had stopped producing the steel pitons that launched their company. “No longer can we assume the earth’s resources are limitless; that there are ranges of unclimbed peaks extending endlessly beyond the horizon,” they wrote. “Mountains are finite, and despite their massive appearance, they are fragile.” The company’s aluminum wedges enabled climbers to move more quickly, without breaking or scarring the rock. The decision revolutionized climbing and marked the beginning of Chouinard’s career as an ethical entrepreneur.

He switched Patagonia’s apparel line to organic cotton in the mid-1990s, a choice not motivated by profit— the move cost the company millions in the short term—but by his desire to have a planet to do business on. “When we broke the connection to the supply chain by buying cotton directly from farmers, we had to establish direct relationships with the spinners and the mills,” explains Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s director of philosophy—yes, that’s his title—in an email. “This allowed us to innovate, early on, cotton/ poly blends that became the basis of new products. In fact, our entire business model shifted to one based on innovations driven by our self-imposed constraints.”

And last December, Chouinard reframed the company’s mission, from “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” to simply “We’re in business to save our home planet.” Previously, he labored to do as little harm as possible; now he believes business can be a force for good.