I must say, from a dog's perspective, Chouinard looks to be that rare two-legged creature who seems to have latched on to the scent of a proper trail.
His trail began, as the genuine article does, in the dirt. In his 20s, Chouinard spent more than half the year living out of a car, climbing mountains with mates and surviving on cans of cat food and stale biscuits.
He was what climbers called a “dirtbag” — an affectionate term, apparently, for someone like me – a creature so oblivious to material things they are content to sleep in the dirt. He taught himself blacksmithing so he could forge his own climbing tools and sell them to fellow climbers to make ends meet. From that humble beginning, a remarkable company grew.
His first love was climbing: the famous Patagonia logo with its jagged mountain backdrop reflects it, but he built it into a leading designer of clothing and gear for what The Boss calls “the silent sports”, like climbing, skiing and snowboarding, trail running and mountain biking, surfing and fly-fishing.
His technical innovations in climbing equipment gave Patagonia its start and, as it prospered, Chouinard made it a great place to work and committed the company to return 10 per cent of its profits to environmental causes.
He never seemed interested in money, and still spends much of his year in a log cabin in Wyoming. When Forbes placed Chouinard on its billionaire list in 2017, he considered it one of the worst days of his life. He stomped around the office demanding something be done. “Get me off that list!” he told anyone who would listen.
Now, compare that to the titans of Silicon Valley, such as Zuckerberg, Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos from Amazon. These are people who refresh the Forbes rankings the way I repeatedly check my food bowl — hopefully, hungrily and first thing in the morning. They accumulate mountains of wealth like a dog who has forgotten where he buried the bones, except they never stop digging and the pile never seems to be enough.
Chouinard went in another direction. “Once you’re public, you’ve lost control over the company,” he said, “and you have to maximise profits for the shareholder. You lose all control, and then you become one of these irresponsible companies."
So in 2022, rather than float Patagonia on the market or sell it to the highest bidder, he transferred the entire company to a trust and a non-profit, with every dollar not reinvested in the business going to protect the planet. “Earth is now our only shareholder,” he announced. “I am dead serious about saving this planet.”
The tech titans, meanwhile, are busy trying to live for ever, colonise Mars, or reshape democracy through algorithms. Chouinard never owned a mobile phone. Never used email. He disappears for months at a time to fish with a tenkara rig — the long and slender Japanese fishing pole, with no reel — and teaches the local Crow Indian kids to do the same.
He told the New York Times at the time of the ownership transfer: “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn't end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people.” Woof!
