Company Culture & Surfing
Understanding company culture has always been quite fascinating to me. How can you gather a group of people and persuade them to act according to a core philosophy? Isn’t that what all parents want, but still most fail?
Patagonia is a private corporation that sells outdoor clothing, found by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, a reluctant businessman whose initial goal was to craft good gear for his climbs. At the time, the pitons available were placed in the rock and left there. He then decided to make his reusable gear by learning how to blacksmith. As expected, high-quality, durability and safety were his main requirements.
His needs as an adventurer are conveyed in one of the company’s core values: “build the best products” — a combination of function, repairability, and durability. I was quite surprised when I found they encourage clients to repair their gear by providing video-tutorials, offering a product care guide and repairing their client’s items for free, most of the time. Patagonia’s goal is not endless consumerism, but to serve the clients for a long time, while limiting its ecological impact.
“It’s no wonder we are no longer called citizens, but consumers.”
A decade after producing and selling his products, Chouinard Equipment became the largest supplier of climbing hardware in the U.S. But the pitons were creating damage in the rock walls of Yosemite, and so, the product was phased out. One of the current core values of Patagonia traces back to the risky decision taken back then: “cause no unnecessary harm.”
Patagonia did take their product repair a step further. You can buy their used clothes, directly from them! The idea is simple: you sell a piece after using it, Patagonia cleans, repairs and sells it on their website, and you get paid. As they state: “Keeping clothing in use just nine extra months can reduce the related carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20-30% (WRAP, 2012).
The launch of the new season is made of 69% of recycled materials, and the company is moving toward 100% renewable and recycled raw materials, to reduce carbon emissions.
Since 1985 that Patagonia decided to give 1% of its sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment. In the process, 1,800 businesses joined the movement and 225$ million were used to support environmental nonprofits. This initiative reinforces Patagonia’s commitment to “use business to protect nature.”
In the book Let my People go Surfing, the founder says something that kept me eager to continue reading:
“I read every book on business, searching for a philosophy that would work for us. I was especially interested in books on Japanese or Scandinavian styles of management because I knew the American way of doing business offered only one of many possible routes.”
I find this idea very compelling. It’s easy to settle and accept the path already tested by millions. But finding your way of doing things is a challenge that only a few are willing to accept. Yvon’s attitude leads to the last core principle — “not bound by convention”.
“The key to confronting and truly solving any problem is to continue to ask enough questions to get past all the symptoms and reach the actual cause.”
As an example, sales in the Japanese winter line dropped 30% between November and December of 2003. The fastest response would be dumping inventory by putting in on sale. But Patagonia kept asking more questions. How were other companies doing? Their businesses were also in a low. A more careful analysis led to the understanding that the weather was uncommonly warm, and no one was buying the winter line. In January, the weather got cold, and all the inventory was sold out, without the need to lower the prices.
“If we only look hard enough, there may be a better way to do things. ”
Patagonia is a company that still serves the reason for being born: making high-quality products for employees and their friends, who are both the producers and the consumers while taking full responsibility for the impact of their actions in the environment.
What does surfing have to do with all of it? Go figure.
“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.”