Yvon Chouinard You are what you do
The calm rebellion of Yvon Chouinard is inspiring a new generation of environmental custodians to stop talking, and start doing.
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Yvon Chouinard is arguably the most successful businessman in the history of the outdoor industry. He has created in Patagonia a company that remains on the cutting edge – not only of technology and design but in the ethical values it practises and preaches.
Chouinard was always a pioneer. Born in 1938 in Maine, he moved to Southern California with his French Canadian family as an eight-year-old and became a surfer in the earliest days of that coastal sub-cult. An interest in falconry soon led him to the vertically oriented delights of climbing, and he would go on to play a vital part in the evolution of North American alpinism, inspiring a move away from the high-impact use of hand-forged iron pitons toward lightweight, removable protection. He picked up influence from Eastern philosophy, and made a killing along the way - manufacturing and marketing the products that enabled him and his contemporaries to explore the mountains in a less harmful manner.
Patagonia has pioneered sustainability as a legitimate business aim. The highly successful One Percent For The Planet initiative afforded the company something of a cult following, while a self-imposed ‘environmental audit’ cemented their commitment to using non-toxic, sustainable resources. By applying the principle of ‘do little harm’ to an otherwise hypocritically depletive industry that was (and largely still is) encouraging us all to love the planet to death, Patagonia as a brand has become somewhat iconic amongst a generation who see themselves as environmental activists.
Still, fresh from a lunchtime yoga class before sharing a wholesome meal in the corporate café, Chouinard listens carefully to my questions, answering them with a relaxed but passionate delivery.
Where does surfing fit into the broader Patagonia project?
Well, I’ve been a life-long surfer, since ’54 or ’55. It’s been a life-long passion. I like to make things that I use myself, and I wanted to diversify the company. Being dependent on mountain sports is kind of a dead end these days. You know, as I’ve been quoted saying before, it’s never going to snow again. A lot of the first descents and ice climbs I’ve done around the world no longer exist. I wouldn’t want to own a ski area! The thing with making clothing for climbing is that you need a lot of stuff. Fact is, you don’t need any of that shit for surfing. All you need is a wetsuit. You know, Kelly Slater can’t surf any better with a pair of $60 surf trunks than he can with cut-off jeans. The whole surf industry is built around caps, T-shits, sweatshirts and very expensive surf trunks, which are totally unnecessary. It’s been a dilemma for us, because we want to make authentic stuff. I don’t want to make stuff that people want but don’t need. That’s the problem with the world. Everyone’s buying stuff they don’t need. How do we break that cycle? Plus, no large company has ever broken into the surfing market, they’ve all started from scratch, you know, because otherwise you don’t have that authenticity.
Is that ‘hardcore’ authenticity still possible with a huge business like Patagonia?
Well, I’m interested in the ‘Generation Y’ effect… In a world of almost infinite lifestyle choices, Generation Y activism is about young people knowing their own inner priorities and vowing to live by them, even in the face of adversity. So Generation Y, as opposed to Generation X and the boomers before them, applies to kids born between the years 1980 and 1994. It is this generation’s consumer activism that makes them a unique challenge for marketing. Generation Y consumers don’t just want to buy brands, they want to buy into what a brand believes in. They flock towards brands like Red and Livestrong that spark movements. Some are social movements - the success of sweatshop-free and socially responsible clothing is making clothing brands like Timberland, American Apparel and Patagonia must-have items for Generation Y. So anyway, this new generation is calling bullshit on a lot of stuff that marketeers do. They don’t believe in advertising, they won’t listen to advertising. So it fits right in with us, right now we’re having the best year we’ve had in years. I personally love recessions.
That was my next question - how has the downturn affected Patagonia?
I love a recession because it kills the competition and drives people to buy things that last a long time. They stop being silly in their fashion choices. They start buying practical things, and that’s where we are. It was a good time to get into surf too, for the same reasons. That’s why I encouraged my son to build his surfboard business [Fletcher Chouinard Designs], because the only things you really need for surfing are a wetsuit and a surfboard. He’s making surfboards that are as good if not better than any in the world right now – performance-wise. And as far as durability and strength goes they are a hundred percent stronger than polyester urethane boards, and they are non-toxic into the bargain.
Do you think that surfers will ever evolve into a group of custodians for the environment that they exploit and enjoy?
Well I mean, that’s the ideal, I’m not sure whether these guys actually live it out in their lives. They talk a good story, but I haven’t seen any effect of what they’re actually doing. I hate to say that. Ninety percent of the American people consider themselves environmentalists. But, you ask them how that translates into their everyday lives and it all falls apart. Have you changed your light bulbs? Do you volunteer? Have you changed your life at all? Do you do anything? I mean, you are what you do, not what you say. And that’s the state of environmentalism these days.
For the full interview, check out HUCK#020, out now.
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Yvon Chouinard (text) by Michael Fordham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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