Lessons Learned: Patagonia

Jack Usher
Aug 22, 2017 · 12 min read

Lessons Learned is a series that delves into brands and asks “What can I learn from you?” It’s the work experience kid; full of enthusiasm and sufficiently educated, but with little wisdom or insider information. New lessons from different brands every week.


The region of Patagonia, South America, after which the clothing company takes its name.

I’ve only really come into contact with Patagonia three times; my dad’s fleece, their neon pink babies’ jacket that’s the favorite of Casey Neistat’s daughter, and a case study of the brand in a talk on ‘cultural strategy’. Although forced, the talk was the first time my understanding of Patagonia went beyond the product line.

Patagonia, born in 1973 out of the eponymous Chouinard Equipment, is today an international clothing brand with 2,200 employees and whose value surpasses $650 million. And they exist, by their own definition, to “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, [and] use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”.

In the talk, Patagonia was touted as a modern brand; one that focussed on its purpose and consumer experience over conventional marketing.

The marketing industry’s favourite pastime is prophesising about the future. And so, in this installment of Lessons Learned, I’ll join them. We’ll examine what really is modern about Patagonia, and the lessons we can learn from an apparently cutting-edge brand.

Why are you here? What do you do?

I hate these kinds of questions and nearly always lie when I answer them because my real answer isn’t good enough. A job interview, for example; responding to ‘why are you here?’ with ‘I have bills to pay’ definitely isn’t good enough.

But Patagonia? Their answer is. They’re here to “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”.

The purpose is two-faceted. Firstly, Patagonia exists to solve the ‘environmental crisis’, by which they mean climate change, global warming, pollution, and resource depletion. Secondly, they exist to create useful products. Depending on your scepticism, the two facets are inseparable.

Purpose is easier to define when you’ve had one since founding day. Yvon Chouinard started business in 1957 by making chrome-molybdenum steel pitons that replaced the one-use soft iron type. It was a product to solve and problem, and probably explains why he wrote in his memoir that “When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competitors and can’t be sold on its merits.”

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard manufacturing carabiners in his early manufacturing days.

So why is a purpose a good thing? Two reasons;

  1. Identity. You can become the x brand. This positioning is especially useful, if like Patagonia, your products aren’t wildly different from those of your competitors when stripped of the label. Your brand has focus; the product and/or service lines up with what you’re about.
  2. Accountability. You can measure your progress. Are you delivering on your promise? Your brand becomes more accessible and transparent to customers.

Not every brand needs, or has, such a clear purpose, but it undoubtedly helps Patagonia to cut through a cluttered marketplace.

Are you sure that’s what you do?

If you say you’re going to do it, do it. This is the big one. J. B. MacKinnon cautions his New Yorker readers that “a sense-making narrative survives only as long as it is believed, and it depends on being both true and perceived to be true.” Customers need to believe Patagonia’s useful, for both themselves and the environment (again, in my view, an invalid separation).

But take a moment for thought, and you realise there’s an unresolved tension in the Patagonia promise. Their 2011 Don’t Buy This Jacket ad that ran in The New York Times declared in its penultimate paragraph that “as is true of all the things we can make and you can buy, this jacket comes with an environmental cost higher than its price”. But their company has seen double-digit annual growth since 2015. Every day, they’re are selling products that contradict their reason for being.

‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ ran in the 2011 Black Friday issue of ‘The New York Times’.

MacKinnon calls this the ‘Patagonia paradox’, and its solution is that “the new economy must grow out from beneath the old one.” Yes, people are still buying clothes with great environmental cost, but it’s better to buy those that last a lifetime from Patagonia than those that last a season from H&M. With global warming in full swing, it would be ignorant to dismiss the environmentalist work of Patagonia because of ideological inconsistency.

But it’s Patagonia’s “distinguished record of environmental philanthropy and investment” that adds real credibility to their promise. There are reams of examples, so here are a curated few;

  • To date, Patagonia has donated $78 million to small-scale, ‘grassroots’ environmentalist organizations as part of their ‘1% For The Planet’ programme.
  • Within two years, all Patagonia cotton products used only organic cotton and since 2014, all down products use ‘Traceable Down’.
  • From 2015–2016, the premium Patagonia paid for Fair Trade materials that went into 190 of its products rose from $76,317 to $355,904.
  • Their Worn Wear scheme repaired 53,065 products from customers in the US and recycled 13,902 in 2016.
  • They developed a new kind of wetsuit material, Yulex, using renewable natural rubber. It cut CO2 emissions by ~80%, and Patagonia have distributed the IP to the industry.

And, best of all, if an employee is arrested following activism, Patagonia will reimburse their bail.

For The Drum’s Cameron Clarke, it’s “a sense of purpose money can’t buy”. Without credibility, though, the sense of purpose wouldn’t even be on sale.

The Patagonia story.

So how do you sell a promise, or a “mission statement”? One of Patagonia’s tactics is storytelling. In a now-inaccessible essay that launched the 2013 ‘Responsible Economy’ campaign, Ridgeway wrote that the most pressing contemporary environmental crises were symptoms of perpetual economic expansion, not problems in and of themselves.

The Worn Wear campaign was later born from his thesis, and encourages customers to extend their Patagonia products’ lives through repair. The insight is that customers develop a bond with their Patagonia products if they’re not replaced every three years. And, having watched enough of the beautiful, golden-hour video series The Stories We Wear, I began to think that I’d quite like my own pair of patched, re-lined, old faithful Patagonia trousers. Fred Casenave, a French surfer who’s the subject of one of the films, shuns “ephemeral” fashion in favour of the patched Patagonia trousers he can see himself wearing for at least “10 more years”.

The Patagonia ‘Worn Wear’ tour on location.

You can submit your own clothing stories to The Stories We Wear Tumblr, and successful applicants receive a Worn Wear badge to add another facet to their coat, hat, or t-shirt’s narrative. Or, you can repair your clothes without boasting using the guides available on the Patagonia website.

It’s a very subtle, and emotive, way of getting customers to engage in Patagonia’s environmentalist narrative. As Jeff Beer writes, “the brand has stepped up its efforts to draw a clearer line between its goods and its overall mission.” You create a personal history with your Patagonia trousers and therefore have a place in the story of how Patagonia saved the planet.

Of course, Patagonia’s mission is a story in and of itself; a “sense-making narrative”. According to Patagonia’s VP of marketing, Joy Howard, “people are hungry for credible stories”.

Continually supporting grassroots environmental organisations, extending their Free Trade range and using solar power for their corporate premises are all examples of how the Patagonia Earth-rescuing narrative has developed. You can either read about it in The Footprint Chronicles, or you can buy into and participate in it with a pair of trousers. Either way, Beer correctly described it as “mission as marketing”.

Any posters? Any TV ads?

In an interview with AdAge, Joy Howard confirmed Beer’s analysis when she remarked that Patagonia’s mission is “very much a part of how we engage with consumers.” So, advertising (in the traditional sense) is the “dead last” thing on their to-do list.

Jeff Cunningham published a lucid analysis of Tesla’s marketing early this month, and in it, he writes of the importance of ‘user experience’.

UX is more than the product. [They] are factors in the experience that can no longer be separated from the product, and for Tesla, they are part of the marketing value.

Sound familiar? The user experience for Patagonia includes the built-to-last equipment, its lifetime guarantee, the environmentalist mission, the heritage and satisfaction of a jacket you’ve repaired yourself, or bringing your clothing to one of the pop-up repair stores on the Worn Wear tour. They’ve focussed on creating a great product with noble ethics, and largely shunned glossy advertising.

I’ll acknowledge the comparison isn’t perfect. Tesla have a unrestrained commercial interest to make the user experience as good as possible; “every feature and metric matched up to something the consumer loved not just wanted.” This wouldn’t fit well with Patagonia’s mission; it commodifies the product, and necessitates a pandering to consumer desires.

In addition, Patagonia hasn’t shunned traditional advertising completely. You may remember the 2011 Don’t Buy This Jacket Press Ad (but you’d be forgiven if not as it only ran for a day). The copy, in startling honesty, lists the environmental costs of manufacturing the company’s R2 jacket. The same year, in Shoreditch, London, huge murals appeared on the sides of buildings that showed only Patagonia’s mission statement, logo, and URL.

Patagonia’s 2016 mural campaign on location in Shoreditch, London.

By Alex Weller’s own admission, the murals were part of the European marketing director’s strategy to grow the brand this side of the Atlantic. Again, we bang our heads against the Patagonia paradox. Yet both The New York Times ad and the murals were innovative uses of conventional media. For Cameron Clarke, while the campaigns shouted “‘think twice’ to get consumers’ attention, the subtext is always ‘don’t think at all about buying anything else’.”

Is your purpose resonating?

Okay, so you have a purpose, you’re following through on it, and you’re marketing it. But if that purpose is poisoning hamsters, you’ve gone wrong. As well as being credible, your brand purpose has to resonate.

The brand has made a number of what MacKinnon calls “early bets” to support its ethical promises. It was one of the first major outdoor clothing companies to ‘bet’ that customers would pay more for ethically-sourced materials when, in 2014, it announced that 10 of its product styles would be Fair Trade Certified. By 2016, 192 styles had the certification, and Patagonia was one of 1,000 companies similarly eschewing ‘fast fashion’ in favour of improving worker wages and living conditions.

All Patagonia board shorts and bikinis are Fair Trade Certified.

Gallup’s 2014 poll of Americans’ views on the environment revealed that those under 30 favor environmental protection over economic growth by 60% to 30%, and even when you remove the generation factor, only 40% of respondents favored economic growth over environmental protection.

It’s a similar story with the utility component of the Patagonia promise. Rick Ridgeway, Patagonia’s VP of environmental affairs, was inspired by a New York Times article that declared the 2008 recession had put “value in vogue.”

“That really caught my eye, because that is our value proposition,” says Ridgeway. To “build the best product” is to build one that lasts; one that’s rigorously tested using the Killer Wash before a lifetime guarantee is applied.

Even if we talk about Patagonia’s mission statement in a very vague manner; that it describes a way of doing business, their purpose is still relevant. Outside of financial factors, a business found to have bad business practices is the number one reason that millennials will switch brands (38% of respondents ranked the reason first in a study by Adroit).

This data is intended to show that the environmentalist and long-wear trends resonate. There’s a convenient intersection between Patagonia’s values and what people are (beginning) to care about.

But the intersection isn’t perfect. Anti-consumerism hasn’t yet gained popular traction. Despite being propelled by Naomi Klein, and fashion brands such as Everlane, Nudie and Asklet, the trend in youth materialism hasn’t declined since 1991 remaining stable around the value of 3.4 on a 5-point scale. When Joy Howard asserted to AdAge that they get “gets tons of product returned” for recycling, she wasn’t wrong, but the 13,902 garments they received in 2016 were only a small proportion of their overall sales.

Nudie Jeans, a Swedish denim outfitter, offer a similar CSR principle; the have a free repair service and sell second-hand jeans.

Returning to the comparison with Tesla, it seems as though Patagonia’s more traditional advertising is filling the shortfall created by pushing an anti-consumerist agenda that doesn’t yet have mainstream hype. While Tesla can focus entirely on a product and experience that build consumer love, Patagonia must always keep an eye on its mission statement.

But, as long as purpose largely resonates, it seems a brand can achieve relevance even if some its values are more futuristic than others.

Don’t just surrender to popular values.

I said above that there was a “convenient intersection” between Patagonia’s values and those of consumers. The cynic would dismiss the brand’s commitment to environmentalism and anti-materialism as bandwagoning.

In Patagonia’s case, there are two responses to this criticism. Firstly, we can’t really doubt their authenticity seeing as their mission follows from a long commitment that started with supporting young activist Mark Capelli in the early 70s. Secondly, as we’ve seen, parts of their agenda aren’t even that popular.

So have a purpose that’s relevant to your brand, and to your audience. Don’t simply hop on the latest ethical bandwagon. Perhaps a good compromise is to adapt your practises to the macro trends; ethical business, or transparency, for example.

Don’t forget what you make.

Yes, the ‘Patagucci’ customers are fuel for the cynics’ allegations of profiteering. They’re buying long-life, utility clothes as fashion statements. But, contradictions of purpose aside, they are proof that Patagonia product line has its own merit.

A Patagonia store in Tokyo. The jackets are made for mountains, not your commute.

Style innovation is baked in to Patagonia. Chouinard apparently once wore a blue stripy rugby on a Scottish climbing trip at a time when “men did not wear bright, colorful clothes, not outside.” But when Chouinard wore the shirt around his buddies, they “asked where they could get one.”

Take the example of American Apparel. They did nearly all manufacturing, distribution and retail in-house (meaning downtown Los Angeles), and paid their workers more than double the American minimum wage. Although the least most noticeable component of their NSFW poster ads, every one had the line “Made in USA — Sweatshop Free”. But their ethical brand promise became their only offering. A large part of American Apparel’s downfall for Robert Johnston, GQ associate editor, was that they were a “one-trick offering: you can’t see where they can take it.” “They do a lovely Y-front,” he says, but the problem is that they never made a different one.

Patagonia’s product line has expanded, with the Fair Trade Certified line, clothes for children and babies, and its new food division Patagonia Provisions. The clothes remain durable, brightly-coloured, and well made. Patagonia may not want the ‘Patagucci’ clientele, but at least they’re secure in the knowledge that eco-friendly or not, their clothes remain desirable.

To wrap up…

The lessons we can learn from Patagonia are;

  1. Have a purpose.
  2. Follow through on your promises.
  3. Don’t be afraid to shun traditional marketing, or to use it differently.
  4. Ensure your purpose resonates, but don’t just change it willy-nilly.
  5. Make sure your product can stand on its own two feet.

Patagonia is nothing new, and to see why, let’s go back to Yvon Chouinard and his afterlife. His fear is “trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competitors and can’t be sold on its merits.” As a mortal, he set up a company that makes the exact opposite. Patagonia equipment is useful; it’s well-made, long-lasting, and environmentally-conscious.

“Staying true to our core values”, the Patagonia website details, “has helped us create a company we’re proud to run and work for.” They’ve been purpose-led since 1973, believing they had a role to play in improving our planet. What qualifies them for the ‘modern brand’ label, then, is simply that we’ve now realised brands can play a role in society beyond their products, and Patagonia has, and continues to show us, how.


Thank you very much for reading. If you have any thoughts, please do share them below.

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Jack Usher

Written by

Web editor, undergraduate historian, writer, ex-radio presenter, aspiring advertiser.

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