Let My People Go Surfing

Key Concepts

Patagonia Values

“We begin with the premise that all life on Earth is facing a critical time, during which survivability will be the issue that increasingly dominates public concern. Where survivability is not the issue, the quality of human experience of life may be, as well as the decline in health of the natural world as reflected in the loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, and the planet’s life support systems. 

“The root causes of this situation include basic values embodied in our economic system, including the values of the corporate world. Primary among the problematic corporate values are the primacy of expansion and short-term profit over such other considerations as quality, sustainability, environmental and human health, and successful communities. 

“The fundamental goal of this corporation is to operate in such a manner that we are fully aware of the above conditions, and attempt to reorder the hierarchy of corporate values, while producing products that enhance both human and environmental conditions. 

“To help achieve these changes, we will make our operating decisions based on the following list of values. They are not presented in order of importance. All are equally important. They represent an “ecology” of values that must be emphasized in economic activity that can mitigate the environmental and social crisis of our times. 

• “All decisions of the company are made in the context of the environmental crisis. We must strive to do no harm. Wherever possible, our acts should serve to decrease the problem. Our activities in this area will be under constant evaluation and reassessment as we seek constant improvement. 

• “Maximum attention is given to product quality, as defined by durability, minimum use of natural resources (including materials, raw energy, and transport), multifunctionalism, nonobsolescence, and the kind of beauty that emerges from absolute suitability to task. Concern over transitory fashion trends is specifically not a corporate value.

• “The board and management recognize that successful communities are part of a sustainable environment. We consider ourselves to be an integral part of communities that also include our employees, the communities in which we live, our suppliers and customers. We recognize our responsibilities to all these relationships and make our decisions with their general benefit in mind. It is our policy to employ people who share the fundamental values of this corporation, while representing cultural and ethnic diversity. 

• “Without giving its achievement primacy, we seek to profit on our activities. However, growth and expansion are values not basic to this corporation. 

• “To help mitigate any negative environmental consequences of our business activity, we impose on ourselves an annual tax of 1 percent of our gross sales, or 10 percent of profits, whichever is greater. All proceeds of this tax are granted to local community and environmental activism. 

• “At all levels of operation—board, management, and staff—Patagonia encourages proactive stances that reflect our values. These include activities that influence the larger corporate community to also adjust its values and behavior, and that support, through activism and financially, grassroots and national campaigners who work to solve the current environmental and social crisis. 

• “In our internal operations, top management will work as a group, and with maximum transparency. This includes an “open book” policy that enables employees easy access to decisions, within normal boundaries of personal privacy and “trade secrecy.” At all levels of corporate activity, we encourage open communications, a collaborative atmosphere, and maximum simplicity, while we simultaneously seek dynamism and innovation.” (pp. 63-4)

Patagonia’s product design philosophy centers functionality and simplicity

Is It Functional?

“Designing from the foundation of filling a functional need focuses the design process and ultimately makes for a superior finished product. Without a serious functional demand we can end up with a product that, although it may look great, is difficult to rationalize as being in our line—i.e., ‘Who needs it?’” (p. 79)

Is It Multifunctional?

“All the more reason, when we consider the purchase of anything, to ask ourselves, both as producers and consumers: Is this purchase necessary? Do I really need a new outfit to do yoga? Can I do well enough with something I already have? And will it do more than one thing?” (p. 80)

Is It Durable?

Does It Fit Our Customer?

Is It as Simple as Possible?

“The functionally driven design is usually minimalist. Or as Dieter Rams, head of design at Braun, maintains, ‘Good design is as little design as possible.’” (p. 84)

“Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved.” (p. 84)

Is the Product Line Simple?

“When we’re doing our job right, each style of ski pant has a distinct purpose. We make each in a good range of sizes (including women’s) and offer just enough colors. When we deviate from our philosophy, for whatever reason, we pay a steep price.” (p. 86)

Is It an Innovation or an Invention?

Is It a Global Design?

“Patagonia is a California company. Our corporate culture, lifestyle, and design sense are still purely California. This helps us in some ways, because California is so polyglot and racially and culturally diverse. Where else could you find a Szechwan enchilada? But I would not yet define Patagonia as a global company until we learn to think, design, and produce beyond our present limits. When we become a global company, not just a business operating internationally, we’ll adapt our designs toward local preferences, toward their functional need and sizing and color. We’ll produce more locally and less centrally. Most important, thinking and acting more globally will open our minds to an endless possibility of new ideas, some of which we can adapt to use in our domestic market.” (p. 87)

Is It Easy to Care For and Clean?

“When we studied the environmental impacts of clothing throughout its life cycle (i.e., fabric manufacture, dyeing, construction, distribution, care by the consumer, and disposal), we were surprised to find that one of the biggest villains was cleaning. We found that the postsale care of a clothing product caused as much as four times the amount of harm as the entire manufacturing process.” (p. 88)

Does It Have Any Added Value?

Is It Authentic?

Is It Beautiful?

“Patagonia clothes should be beautiful, and they can be art. Fashion is happening only now, and art is timeless.” (p. 91)

Are We Just Chasing Fashion?

Are We Designing for Our Core Customer?

Does It Cause Any Unnecessary Harm?

Patagonia’s financial philosophy is to serve the mission, not the profit

“At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal, because the Zen master would say profits happen “when you do everything else right.” In our company, finance consists of much more than the management of money. It is primarily the art of leadership through the balancing of traditional financing approaches in a business that is anything but traditional. In many companies, the tail (finance) wags the dog (corporate decisions). We strive to balance the funding of environmental activities with the desire to continue in business for the next hundred years.” (p. 151)

“Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality. When we make a decision because it’s the right thing to do for the planet, it ends up also being good for the business.” (p. 152)

“We never wanted to be a big company. We want to be the best company, and it’s easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company.” (p. 154)

“In an age when change happens so quickly, any strategic plan must be updated at least every year. Many Japanese companies don’t do yearly budgets, they do a new budget every six months. In our case, an inflexible plan would be centralized planning at its worst. It builds in a certain rigidity, a certain bureaucracy, that is oblivious of changing realities. A budget can be a valuable guideline and planning tool, or it can be a bludgeon.” (p. 154)

The management philosophy centers trust and change

“A top-down central system like a dictatorship takes an enormous amount of force and work to keep the hierarchy in power. Of course, all top-down systems eventually collapse, leaving the system in chaos.” (p. 168)

“When you look to hire management, it’s important to know the difference between a manager and a true leader. For instance, the branch manager of a bank is expected to avoid risks (not make loans without approval from higher up), implement strategic plans, and keep things running as they always have. It is like the difference between a cook and a chef. They both cook food, but the chef creates recipes and manages a kitchen while the cook only follows the recipes. Leaders take risks, have long-term vision, create the strategic plans, and instigate change.” (p. 168)

“A familial company like ours runs on trust rather than on authoritarian rule. I’ve found that whenever we have had a top manager or CEO leave the company, there is no chaos. In fact, the work continues as if they were still there. It’s not that they were doing nothing but that the system is pretty much self-regulating.” (p. 168)

Quotables

“Our guiding principle of design stemmed from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French aviator: Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over drafts and blue-prints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.” (p. 21)

“After we had pondered our responsibilities and financial liabilities, one day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time. It was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious. I also knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business; I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from those pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.” (p. 38)

“One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.” Since I had never wanted to be a businessman, I needed a few good reasons to be one.” (p. 40)

“I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line—and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.” (p. 42)

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” —Richard Buckminster Fuller (p. 91)

“Business is a race to see who can be the first to bring a product to the customer, and inventions and ideas are often born simultaneously around the world by any number of unrelated individuals. It’s almost as if every idea has its time.” (p. 111)

“Just as doing risk sports will create stresses that lead to a bettering of one’s self, so should a company constantly stress itself in order to grow. Our company has always done its best work whenever we’ve had a crisis. I’ve never been so proud of our employees as in 1994, when the entire company was mobilized to change over from using traditional cotton to organically grown by 1996. It was a crisis that led to writing down our philosophies. When there is no crisis, the wise leader or CEO will invent one. Not by crying wolf but by challenging the employees with change.” (p. 173)

“When I look at my business today, I realize one of the biggest challenges I have is combating complacency. I always say we’re running Patagonia as if it’s going to be here a hundred years from now, but that doesn’t mean we have a hundred years to get there! Our success and longevity lie in our ability to change quickly. Continuous change and innovation require maintaining a sense of urgency—a tall order, especially in Patagonia’s seemingly laid-back corporate culture. In fact, one of the biggest mandates I have for managers at the company is to instigate change. It’s the only way we’re going to survive in the long run.” (p. 228)

“I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need. From my feeble attempts at simplifying my own life I’ve learned enough to know that should we have to, or choose to, live more simply, it won’t be an impoverished life but one richer in all the ways that really matter.” (p. 231)