(New York) Yvon Chouinard has built an empire with his Patagonia outdoor clothing brand, but this climbing and surfing enthusiast thinks above all about nature and has never wanted to do business like everyone else.
Posted at 12:23 p.m.
New proof if needed: he, at 83, decided to simply donate his company to fight even more effectively against the environmental crisis.
An iconoclastic gesture in the United States, the country of capitalism par excellence, but consistent with the life of this adopted Californian.
“I’ve been a businessman for nearly 60 years,” he wrote in a 2006 book. are an alcoholic or a lawyer. »
“Yet a business can produce food, cure disease, control demographics, employ people, and generally enrich our lives,” he continued. And she can “make a profit without losing her soul.” »
Mr. Chouinard has strived to make Patagonia a responsible company.
The company made a commitment in 1985 to donate the equivalent of 1% of its turnover to environmental protection groups and was one of the first clothing distributors to convert entirely to organic cotton. in 1996.
Patagonia also became the first to adopt California public benefit status in 2012, and in 2018 officially changed the company’s purpose to “save the planet.”
Eventually, almost 50 years after launching Patagonia, Mr. Chouinard decided, in agreement with his wife and two children, to transfer 100% of their shares in the company to a trust responsible for ensuring that its values are respected, and to an association for the fight against the environmental crisis and the protection of nature.
The latter will receive all the profits of the company, which it estimates at around 100 million dollars a year.
“The Earth is now our sole shareholder,” concludes Mr. Chouinard.
Rugby shirts
Patagonia board member Kristine Mcdivitt Tompkins has known Yvon Chouinard since he was 24. “His vision has never changed,” she says in the press release announcing the evolution of Patagonia.
“Even though he is still in good health, he wanted to put a plan in place for the future of the company and the future of the planet,” she explains.
Born in 1938 in Maine, in the northeastern United States, to a French-Canadian father from Quebec and a mother he describes as “adventurer”, Yvon Chouinard moved to California in 1946.
It was in a falcon observation club that he discovered a passion for climbing a few years later.
He begins to make his own pitons, learning ironwork elements along the way. Other mountaineers covet them. His business is launched, even if it barely brings him enough to live on for the first few years.
In 1965, he officially created Chouinard Equipment with a partner, which became a reference company in climbing equipment.
During an excursion in Scotland, Yvon Chouinard bought a rugby jersey for climbing, a solid garment with a collar to avoid cutting his neck with the ropes.
Back in the United States, he was emulated. Seeing a new opportunity, he begins to sell rugby shirts and other clothing. Patagonia was officially launched in 1973.
The group has since diversified, creating subsidiaries in food, media, surfboards, investments in start-ups that share its values and the recycling of previously worn clothing.
Forbes magazine recently estimated the fortune of the entrepreneur at 1.2 billion dollars.
But Mr. Chouinard drives an old Subaru, does not own a computer or cell phone and shares his life between two modest homes in California and Wyoming, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Of his latest decision for his business, Yvon Chouinard told the daily: “Let’s hope this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t lead to the co-existence of a few rich and a bunch of poor people. »