Who is yvon chouinard

Chouinard had no lofty goal in mind. He simply wanted to make enough money to go climbing and to make better climbing equipment. Even after he hired a few friends, rented space and formed a company called Chouinard Equipment, its first catalog — a one-page sheet of items and prices — warned customers not to expect fast delivery during the summer. That was climbing season. Those humble beginnings spawned Patagonia , the global outdoor clothing and gear company widely admired for its values-laden business practices and financial success.

But he has continued to do business his own way by defying conventional business wisdom. Patagonia is a Best for the World honoree. Find the full list of Best for the World companies and all of our stories about these companies setting the gold standard for people using business as a force for good. Patagonia because the company is not just an eco-conscious brand trying to manage its own environmental-impact footprint.

And that he has. His company is expanding into food, venture investing and residential solar power — none directly related to clothing, but all aligned with the goals and mission of Patagonia.

Success almost spoiled Patagonia. It happened long after Chouinard Equipment morphed into Patagonia, and Chouinard learned a lesson that has guided him ever since: The devotion to quality that made his climbing-tools business a success applied equally to his clothing enterprise. The brand soon appealed to the less adventurous as well.

By the late s, the company was growing by 30 percent to 50 percent a year and borrowing heavily to open new stores and sales offices around the world. A lot of these people were my friends, and it was absolutely my fault. They decided, first of all, that the company should be dedicated to making the best-quality products, which are durable, simple and require little care.

The executive team decided it wanted the company to support environmental causes with its profits. The Patagonia trip was a watershed moment.

To instill the newly defined value system in the staff, Chouinard led employees on weeklong adventure trips to places like Yosemite and the Marin Headlands. It has grown from the tin shed into a small village of about a dozen buildings. Here and there are vitrines with old articles of gear.

Some have Post-its affixed—handwritten annotations provided by Malinda Chouinard. Malinda is virtually invisible, in standard accounts of the company, but in Ventura, and in routine conversation with anyone who has ever been involved with Patagonia, she looms as large, in many respects, as her husband.

She rides herd. Her e-mail blasts—known as Malindagrams—are exhaustive, as is her head for detail. When I first met her, she told me, with something like ferocity, that I was not to quote her.

Thereafter, she was very kind and civil. Her mother was the same way. Malinda is principally responsible for making the company a notably humane place to work. Many there cite the advantage of having day care on site.

A staff of twenty-eight oversees some eighty kids, on sprawling grounds of more than twelve thousand square feet, roughly half of it outdoors, among the fruit trees. A recent baby boom had led to another expansion, which displaced the H. To become a B Corp, you must adopt stringent objectives with regard to labor practices and social and environmental impact.

The following year, Patagonia, also a founder of the Fair Labor Association, discovered, further down its supply chain, that many of its textile mills, principally in Taiwan, engaged in human trafficking.

Even though Patagonia was one of the smaller customers, it led a movement, in conjunction with other clients, N. Meanwhile, Chouinard had become an adviser and scold to big business.

He was clueless. He sent all his top managers out to find out what that means. Rick Ridgeway spent a couple of years advising them. The two companies, unlikely partners at first blush, also co-hosted a sustainability conference in New York. The elephant in the room is growth.

Growth is the culprit. Chouinard has a desk in an office he shares with the C. Sometimes he wanders over to the old tin shed, a kind of shrine. He had on a worn chili-red polo shirt, khaki standup shorts, and flip-flops—burly forearms crossed over a paunch.

He is not tall. I asked him how much power he had. If I complain about something, I often get a passive-aggressive response. I put up with it, because the alternative is to micromanage.

They communicate and figure it out. The whole team has to agree on what the mission is. He has a succession plan in place to insure that Patagonia remains in the family after he dies. My kids realize that. They are taking over more and more. Claire, thirty-eight, works in the design department.

We have normal salaries. Actually, I think we were raised to be slightly embarrassed about it. In a storm, in , waves came up over the roof. Around the house Malinda has taped up newspaper clippings about exercise, memory, alcohol, and age.

Chouinard cooked. Whatever you touch first in the freezer you eat. I touched a goose. Watch your teeth. The cat-food days are long gone. Over the years, the Chouinards had taken very little money out of the business. In addition to Ventura and Jackson, they have a small place up the coast at the Hollister Ranch, a famous surfing spot that is off-limits to the public. Every now and then, he still sleeps in his car.

He says that he and his wife give away half their salaries to charity. I asked him one day if the prospect of death bothered him, especially with many of his friends and contemporaries dying or getting ill. Doug and Kris Tompkins spent decades assembling land in Chile and Argentina, in an unprecedented, and not uncontroversial, effort to create vast nature preserves and national parks.

This is equivalent, in area, to six Yellowstones. Last December, the Do Boys set out on a paddling trip on a remote lake in southern Chile.

It was supposed to be a mellow five-day affair, but a sudden Patagonian gale kicked up. Chouinard and Jib Ellison, in a two-man kayak, managed to reach an island. But Ridgeway and Tompkins capsized, and spent almost an hour in the near-freezing water, battling the tumult. I gave up. I was starting to drown. I decided to take it all in. It was so deeply beautiful. That was when I saw my comrades coming around the corner. So I still had a chance. I snapped out of it. Tompkins was in worse shape.

After they were towed to shore, he was suffering so badly from hypothermia that he was helicoptered to a hospital, and he died there that night. For all the perils that he and the others had faced down, over the decades, this end, on a supposedly gentle excursion, came as a shock to everyone in their circle. She and her husband lived in Patagonia and flew in a small plane together almost every day. He starts something, and you need an entourage to clean it up.

He micromanages and left no clear marching orders. Kris is now delegating. They calculated risk better than most. I was in both cases the conservative one, the one always wringing my hands. We left Moose at 6 A. Chouinard was driving a silver Honda Element that belonged to Fletcher. In , Chouinard spoke to Wal-Mart buyers worldwide about how the retail giant could adopt more sustainable practices.

Wilson wrote a book called The Compass and the Nail detailing how Patagonia's business model could rescue companies while also saving the planet. Chouinard, the reluctant businessman might have just achieved what he set out to do — create a business that inspires others to find solutions to the planet's environmental woes. But Chouinard has continued to shun the corporate lifestyle and still travels part of the year.

He never had an intention to make money anyway, says his friend Tompkins Buell. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Mar 5, , pm EST. Nov 9, , pm EST. Nov 2, , pm EDT. Oct 30, , am EDT. He started hammering out pitons — metal spikes that rock climbers pound into cracks to use as anchors — for himself and his friends to use on the walls of Yosemite.

As demand grew, Chouinard expanded production, created new products and named the whole thing Chouinard Equipment. Clothing, and Patagonia, came later.

Now Chouinard himself has compiled the stories between those timeline moments — accounts of mishaps in the mountains, of undocumented waves and catching mythical fish — into a book called Some Stories: Lessons From the Edge of Business and Sport. The book, which includes articles, letters and musings that Chouinard wrote throughout his life as well as a collection of gorgeous photos, paints a picture of a founder whose interests and passions influenced and shaped an entire culture.

It lights the path from self-proclaimed dirtbag climber to concerned environmentalist. He did time. She refused to reimburse me for repairs because her contract said it was supposed to be delivered by October The cops came and agreed with her side of the story and gave us twenty-four hours to get out of town.

We had ten dollars between us so we hitched to Grants, New Mexico, where we were thrown in jail for seventy-two hours. Doody had the same experience when he came up. We all huddled under a steep wall. Beckey and I were jumpy, but Doody was very quiet and calm.