By: Stephen Chen

In 1952, Yvon Chouinard moved to California with his family. It was a beautiful place with a lot of national parks that brought him happiness during his childhood. Due to their exposure to nature, he has been fond of mountain climbing. At that time, most of the rock-climbing equipment that came from Europe didn’t work well and destroyed the original structure of the rock.

Frustrated, Chouinard decided to become a blacksmith and make tools that worked well and could protect the environment. When he finished college, he started his iron-making career in his garage.

Chouinard’s handmade non-environment-damaging tools sold well. Chouinard established his first firm Chouinard Equipment which became one of the most famous climbing brands in a few years.

The success of Yvon’s career made him more diligent and “capricious”. Why was he capricious? Let me tell you a story. As the number of orders increased, he found that many people would discard rock nails, which were the most popular product in his company, on the mountain. Chouinard stopped manufacturing this product to protect the environment.

If you have the climbing tools, you can’t lack the clothes. Yvon Chouinard sold the Chouinard Equipment and set up a new company in 1973 named Patagonia. For almost 50 years, this company has sought to develop and explore the possibilities of outdoor clothing. Now it’s almost Number one in the outdoor clothing market of North America. Consumers are attracted by the well-made clothing, and the company’s respect and admiration for nature.

If you have never seen its website, you might notice that it doesn’t look like a website to shop, but a kind of environmental conduct propaganda. “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement a solution to the environmental crisis.” is the explanation to its mission. It’s still a small step for Chouinard to make a contribution to the environment.

Since 1998, Patagonia has donated 1% of its sales to many organizations that are focused on environmental protection projects around the world. In this year, Chouinard made a big decision: he gave his company away to a non-profit group called the Holdfast Collective.

This company makes a profit of over 100 million per year. Now, all this money will go to saving the environment. When we review his life, we can see that he is a rock climber, environmentalist, philanthropist, and trader. As he says, he is never a businessman who wants to realize the maximum of his interests, but instead, an environmentalist who owns a business.