Outdoor market: can the eco-friendly approach that has made Patagonia, Inc. big profits be a model for all other companies? Nope

Washington Monthly, Oct-Nov, 2005 by Brendan I. Koerner

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

By Yvon Chouinard Penguin Press HC; $26.95

When deciding whether a movie deserved a lukewarm recommendation or a flat-out pan, the late Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel would ask himself: "Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" After applying the test to 1993's True Romance, for example, Siskel slammed the movie, concluding that he would rather watch a video of Dennis Hopper and Christian Slater conversing over meatball sandwiches.

A useful corollary to Siskel's rule as applied to autobiographies of business titans might be. "After reading this book, would I want to have lunch with the author?"

The highest compliment I can thus pay Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman is that I'd love to break bread with Yvon Chouinard. A master outdoorsman and eco-activist extraordinaire, Chouinard is also the founder of Patagonia, a company that grosses $230 million per year selling some of the coolest adventure gear on Earth. Patagonia is distinguished not only by the quality of merchandise, but also by its dedication to ethically and environmentally sound corporate policies; it is a Sierra Club member's dream of a multimillion dollar company.

Yet, Chouinard's book has its problems. It shows no signs of having been ghostwritten, which in this case is not a compliment; Chouinard is obviously not familiar with Mr. T: The Man With the Gold, another memoir in which the subject failed to hand off the literary duties to a more competent wordsmith.

But the bigger problem with the book lies with the lessons he proposes to present from his life and his company's success. Chouinard tends to spout holier-than-thou rhetoric in lieu of concrete ideas. Let My People Go Surfing is billed as a manifesto rather than a memoir, and for good reason--Chouinard spends much of the book exhorting readers to learn from Patagonia's philosophy of corporate responsibility. In doing so, he makes Patagonia seem a little like Sweden: earnest and effective, admirable, even enviable, but a bit too smug about its superiority and oblivious to the fact its system can't be applied everywhere.

There is no doubt that Chouinard has led a life worth envying, starting with an adolescence spent scaling the "Tetons and camping in Baja California. To make ends meet, he worked for a detective agency that counted Howard Hughes among its clients; the young Chouinard was charged with keeping tabs on Hughes's mistresses and ensuring that the tycoon's yacht was germ-free.

In 1957, using tools salvaged from a junkyard, Chouinard taught himself blacksmithing in order to forge his own mountaineering equipment, such as pitons (the spikes driven into rocks) and carabiners (which connect ropes to pitons). Suffering through a failed marriage and an Army stint in Korea, he eventually turned his metallurgical hobby into a business, selling sturdy gear to fellow climbers.

But he quickly moved on from peddling carabiners to clothing, as anyone who's strolled across a New England university campus can attest. Chouinard started his clothing line with English corduroys and rugby shirts, two garments durable enough to withstand the rigors of rock climbing. He later branched out into quick-drying polyester in the mid-1970s, and then into fleecy Synchilla, which would become the unofficial fabric of cold-weather fraternity houses.

From the beginning, Chouinard fancied himself an enlightened boss. He refers to his management style as MBA--management by absence--and prefers to field test new products in the Andes rather than deal with day-to-day operations. Patagonia also offered its employees such perks as child care and flex time from the very beginning--the book's title refers to the tendency of Patagonia employees to spend their flex time catching waves near the company's Ventura, Calif, headquarters.

Despite his easygoing credo, Chouinard is no slacker. He keeps a watchful eye on Patagonia's dealings with every supplier and contractor, and he exhibits a remarkable fascination with fabric technology; the man is in full command of all trivia related to the melting point of polypropylene. He appears to have given far less thought, however, as to why his little blacksmithery grew so rapidly into a booming corporation. Chouinard simply credits the high quality of Patagonia garments, with an occasional hat tip to more mundane business choices--for example, offering jackets in teal and cobalt rather than humdrum brown.

Though recreational climbing has certainly grown in popularity during Patagonia's existence, climbers alone are not sufficient to explain the company's sales. Whether intentionally or not, Chouinard ignores the obvious when he fails to acknowledge his debt to poseurs: Patagonia would still be a niche company were it not for the legions of preppies who responded to the brand's macho imagery, honed in catalogues depicting muscled athletes dangling from outcroppings. It would be fascinating to learn what percentage of Men's Lightweight R4 Vests ($135) are worn exclusively within a 500-yard radius of some variety of asphalt