15/09/2022
Patagonia will continue to operate as a private, for-profit corporation but the Chouinard family, which controlled the company until last month, no longer own the company. Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Yvon Chouinard, Founder Pataogonia, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a non-profit organization
โHopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesnโt end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,โ Chouinard, 83, said in an exclusive interview. โWe are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.โ
As a pioneering rock climber in Californiaโs Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, Chouinard lived out of his car and ate damaged cans of cat food that he bought for 5 cents apiece. Even today, he wears raggedy old clothes, drives a beat-up Subaru and splits his time between modest homes in Ventura and Jackson. Chouinard does not own a computer or a cell phone.
Patagonia, which Chouinard founded in 1973, became a company that reflected his own idealistic priorities, as well as those of his wife. The company was an early adopter of everything from organic cotton to on-site child care, and famously discouraged consumers from buying its products, with an advertisement on Black Friday in The New York Times that read, โDonโt Buy This Jacket.โ
The company has given away 1 percent of its sales for decades, mostly to grassroots environmental activists. And in recent years, the company has become more politically active, going so far as to sue the Trump administration in a bid to protect Bears Ears National Monument.
Yet as Patagoniaโs sales soared, Chouinardโs own net worth continued to climb, creating an uncomfortable conundrum for an outsider who abhors excessive wealth.
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