Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman - Including 10 More Years of Business as Usual

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Like Yvon Chouinard, you might see where, in your life, or work, you can rewrite the rules to set yourself and others up to win. My lifelong adventure in business took root in Southern California. My family had moved from Lisbon, Maine, to Burbank, California, in 1946, when I was eight, because my mother, the real adventurer among us, thought the drier climate would help my father's asthma. My father was a tough French Canadian who worked as a journeyman plasterer, carpenter, electrician, and plumber, and I had an older brother and two older sisters. People may be afraid of the term ‘activist’ because they associate it with ecosabotage and violent protests, but I’m talking about normal citizens who want the government to live up to its obligations to protect our air, water and all other natural resources. Activists have an infectious passion about the issues they support, whether they are mothers fighting to clean up toxic landfills that are killing their children or farmers trying to hold on to their fourth-generation family business threatened by urban sprawl. These are the people on the front lines, trying either to make the government obey its own laws or to recognize the need for a new law.” The original definition of consumer is "one who destroys or expends by use; devours, spends wastefully." It would take seven Earths to provide enough raw materials to allow the rest of the world to consume at the same rate Americans do. Ninety percent of what we buy in a mall ends up in the dump within 60 to 90 days. It's no wonder we're no longer called citizens but consumers. Our politicians and corporate leaders are fair reflections of who we've become.

Wonderful . . . a moving autobiography, the story of a unique business, and a detailed blueprint for hope." —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel In the early 1970s, as an offshoot of Chouinard Equipment, came a clothing line. It’s this line that ultimately became what we now know to be Patagonia. Patagonia’s first official store opened in 1973, in Ventura, CA. 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 that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product like - and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.” In this 10th anniversary edition, Yvon Chouinard—legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.—shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.Klein sums up the book by saying: “This is the story of an attempt to do more than change a single corporation—it is an attempt to challenge the culture of consumption that is at the heart of the global ecological crisis.”

None of this is necessary. No cotton was grown this way before World War II, when many of the chemicals now used in agriculture were first developed as nerve gases for warfare. You will always be able to reason yourself into undermining the values that might go against the grain. My company, Ventura, California–based Patagonia Inc., maker of technical outdoor apparel and gear, is an ongoing experiment. Founded in 1973, it exists to challenge conventional wisdom and present a new style of responsible enterprise. We believe the accepted model of capitalism, which necessitates endless growth and deserves the blame for the destruction of nature, must be displaced. Patagonia and its thousand employees have the means and the will to prove to the rest of the corporate world that doing the right thing makes for good, financially sound business. If you find yourself feeling like you need to make those compromises on your non-negotiables, maybe that’s a call for a firmer allegiance to your values and greater creativity in problem-solving.Again, like the Zen approach to archery or anything else, you identify the goal and then forget about it and concentrate on the process. Measure” He recognized there wasn’t one way to do anything (well, most anything). If ultimately he learned that there was just one way to something, and that was a way he didn’t enjoy, then he wasn’t going to do it. Is working employees tirelessly, in a chaotic environment sustainable for 100 years? Of course not. Employee turnover would be constant and company cohesiveness would be routinely interrupted. In 1996, they moved to exclusively use organic cotton versus conventional cotton in their clothing. Today, the company’s design philosophy centers on producing the “best product” possible. This means it must last as long as possible, be as simple as possible, and as useful as possible. And Patagonia learned that you cannot have both precision and perfection in your products and maintain 40-50% growth. It was this desire to manifest the entire potential of the company all at once that led to them hitting that wall in 1990.