It is ironic if we take into account that he is the founder of a multinational that has amassed millions of dollars selling clothes, but Yvon Chouinard does not like labels. That’s why when more than five years ago, in March 2017, he opened the magazine Forbes and found that they had placed one on him, the “billionaire” one, he went into a rage. “It pissed me off”recognize.
The reason is not that the data was incorrect, that they had missed some figure when calculating their fortune or were wrong in telling their story or sizing their company, the successful clothing firm Patagonia. No way. Plain and simple, Chounard didn’t like being hung up on that title made with a fortune of nine zeros and for which many—most?—would give an arm.
No. Chounard, an unclassifiable character, with a story worthy of the best biographical chronicles (which he has) and very different from the hackneyed archetype of the tycoon who moves through the Wall Street parquet like a shark sailing through the waters of the Pacific, that scaled him so much so that five years later it ended doing the unthinkable. What? Well basically donate your juicy company.
And not in a vague, rhetorical way, adorning it with some altruistic purpose of diffuse execution. Chounard has announced a turnaround so that his company, valued at around 3,000 million dollars, passes into the hands of a trust and a non-profit organization with a perfectly defined purpose: that it turns to the protection of the environment.
“From now on the Earth is our sole shareholder. all benefits”, in perpetuity, will go towards our mission to save our planet”, announced the company.
Chouinard himself worked together with his wife and children and the company’s team of lawyers —he specifies Guardian— to design a structure that allows Patagonia to work as a for-profit company that allocates its profits to environmental initiatives.
Specifically, the British newspaper abounds, the family donated 2% of the shares and all the authority for decision-making to the trust that will be in charge of controlling the company’s values. The remaining 98% goes to an organization, Holdfast Collective, so that it allocates “every dollar received” in the protection of nature and biodiversity. The structure contemplates reinvestment in the business and has a recognized purpose: to prevent the company from being sold or going public.
“Instead of exploiting natural resources for shareholder returns, we are turning shareholder capitalism on its head by making the Earth our sole shareholder”.
sounds like philosophy new age multinational version, but part of someone who has just set the course for a multi-million dollar company for the defense of biodiversity. On its website, the firm explains that the Chouinard family will dedicate themselves to guiding the Patagonia Purpose Trust and will continue to be part of the board of directors. Another of his missions will be to direct the philanthropic work of Holfast Collective.
There are those who also point out, yes, that the change that has just taken place in Patagonia could have a counterpart with a very different character: saving hundreds of millions in taxes.
Hey, friends, we just gave our company to planet Earth. OK, it’s more nuanced than that, but we’re closed today to celebrate this new plan to save our one and only home. We’ll be back online tomorrow.https://t.co/fvRFDgOzVZ
— Patagonia (@patagonia) September 14, 2022
If someone with whom the business turn is not surprising, it is precisely with Chouinard, the billionaire who did not want to be a billionaire. His story, of course. it’s quirky.
The 83-year-old businessman started his business in 1957 with a deployment that has little to do with the dimensions that Patagonia would end up reaching. He started with just enough: a resale forge with which he dedicated himself to manufacturing pins and spikes for mountaineers in the backyard of his home in Burbank, California. The thing did not go badly for him and in the 70s, after a climb in Scotland in which he put on a shirt for rugby players, he decided to start in the clothing business.
In that, too, he was lucky.
His keen eye allowed his company grow and grow until you sneak it into the pages of Forbes in 2017, but Chouinard’s is not a story to use among the biographical chronicle in salmon paper. His is more like the journey of a nineteenth-century explorer: he survived for weeks in the Rockies with little more than what he was wearing, he slept nights and nights in the open, and in the 1960s he was even arrested for traveling aimlessly and half in an Arizona freight train.
That personality was transmitted to Patagonia, a name that he chose by the way after a trip through South America. The company has been donating 1% of its income to environmental causes for many years, promoted the Alliance for Conservation, put its managers in a bind in the 90s by requiring them to switch production to 100% organic cotton and in 2011 He even published an ad encouraging his customers to buy second-hand clothes. The adventurer did not hesitate to enter the political arena after the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House.
Now in the spin of spins, he has decided to make a move that sounds almost like Science fiction.
His goal certainly seems more ambitious than sneaking into Forfes magazine: “influencing a new form of capitalism that does not end with a few rich and a lot of poor.”
Cover image | Patagonia