E-mail a friendYvon Chouinard
airdate December 13, 2005
Yvon Chouinard is a surfer, fly fisher and world-class mountaineer. He's also founder of Patagonia, Inc., an outdoor clothing company that he built into a $230 million company without taking it public. On the premise that green business is good business, he devotes 1% of annual sales to grassroots environmental organizations. Chouinard is also a noted writer, on climbing issues and ethics and, in Let My People Go Surfing, relates his core philosophies that are simultaneously common sense and radical.
Yvon Chouinard
Tavis: Yvon Chouinard is the founder and owner of Patagonia, the multimillion dollar apparel company based just north of Los Angeles. But he's not your average corporate mogul. He's an active climber and surfer, and has made philanthropy and environmental concerns a key part of his business manifesto. His new memoir is called 'Let my People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.' Mr. Chouinard, nice to have you on the program.
Yvon Chouinard: Nice to meet you.
Tavis: A great title for a book. Where'd you come up with this one?
Chouinard: (laughs) Well, we have a company policy that when the surf comes up in Ventura, you just drop work and you go surfing.
Tavis: And how do you run a company with policies like that? Just let people just...
Chouinard: Well, I just hire responsible people. It's the key. And then you just let them do their work. I don't care when they work. And no one has ever abused it. I mean, you know, if you're gonna be a serious surfer, you don't go surfing next Tuesday at 2:00.
Tavis: Yeah. (laughs) You gotta go when the tide is up.
Chouinard: Yeah, when the surf is up. Absolutely.
Tavis: How do you balance that, though, with - you want to hire responsible people, as I suspect anybody does. You want to hire responsible people who are going to meet the productivity levels that you want them to meet. But how do you maintain those productivity levels if people can come and go surfing when the surf is up?
Chouinard: It's not up to me. It's up to them. I just let them do their work. I'm not there, you know, putting my thumb on them and telling them, 'Look, you gotta do this and that.' They know more about the business than I do. And I just hire the right people and then let them do their job.
Tavis: As a matter of fact, you have a great line. You say that your MBA stands for 'management by absence.'
Chouinard: That's right.
Tavis: MBA, 'management by absence.' That is, you well know, it's a cool story. But you well know that what you are suggesting right now is really antithetical to what most people have access to, wherever they are working. Their bosses don't treat them this way. This is not the American way that business is run.
Chouinard: Well, yeah, most people are in business to feel important. When they go on vacation or something, they call in every day, and say, "How are things going?' I never call in. I don't need that. I don't need to feel like, this place will fall down if I'm not there.
Tavis: So that the nucleus, the essence of your philosophy then is that if you hire responsible people, you can leave the office, go surfing, go on vacation and never call?
Chouinard: That's right.
Tavis: That simple.
Chouinard: Yeah. Sure.
Tavis: There are a lot of people who believe that there aren't as many responsible people in the pool of employees today as there once was. So how do you find these responsible people in a world where we're told at least every day that a good worker's hard to find?
Chouinard: I think there's way more responsible people. They're just not being hired. I mean, I've got 79% women working for me...
Tavis: Maybe that's the answer, hire all women.
Chouinard: Well, hire women who have already had kids and they're ready for a career after they've had kids. Well, they're unemployable in any other company, practically. You know, they're older, but they're ready to kick butt. They're aggressive. They've managed a bunch of kids. They've managed a family. They've managed a budget. They're ready to go to work.
Tavis: I'm gonna fire my entire crew and hire all women who had kids. (laughs) I love these guys. If I get more productivity, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. That said, your company has been called one of the most interesting, and one of the most inspiring companies anywhere on the globe. Tell me what it is about your company that people find so inspiring about the way you all do your work, the way you run your company.
Chouinard: Well, it's probably, you know, the fact that we've been able to blur the distinction between work and play. Instead of dragging ourselves to work every day and just leaving work at work, we bring our families to work. We have our own on-site childcare center.
And we blur the distinction between work and play, work and family, work and play, it's all part of the one thing. And we hire friends, so that we wanna be working with friends and people that we like. One of my first criteria for hiring is whether I wanna go to dinner with that person or not.
Tavis: Again, that is counter-intuitive to the way we run businesses. You would think that if you're hiring all your boys, if you're hiring your homies, if you're hiring your girlfriends, if you're hiring your friends, there's a bunch of chit-chat, there's a whole lot of surfing. And if not surfing, certainly shopping, and nothing gets done if you're hiring a bunch of friends.
Chouinard: Oh, it's the other way around. You can trust them, for one thing. Like I said, no one abuses it.
Tavis: Talk to me about where you got this, how you came into this environmental consciousness that you have. Because the way you produce, we should talk about some of the products that Patagonia makes. Let's talk about the products that you put out, and how you have found an environmentally conscious and conscientious way to produce these products?
Chouinard: Well, my job is to be the outside guy. I travel around the world and I bring ideas back into the company. And over the years, I've traveled, I've been to Africa I don't know how many times over 20 years, probably. And I've seen the deterioration, I've seen the deterioration of the environment everywhere. And I wanna be part of the solution to that, rather than the problem.
The first - before you can ever change your attitude or your lifestyle or anything, you have to admit that you're part of the problem. And as a manufacturer of clothing, and using up non-renewable resources, I just accept the fact that I'm a polluter, and that we're causing a lot of damage making the products that we make. And I wanna minimize that.
So that's why I exist in business. I really, I couldn't care less about making any more money or having a larger business. I really am very concerned about the future of the planet, and I wanna do something about it.
Tavis: Brian, throw me that thing right there. Yeah. Thank you. I just happen to have this on the set. All of our staff people here - I try to be nice to my people. I can't let them go surfing, but, TV show doesn't get done - if Dave isn't standing there, I got a problem.
So I can't let him go surfing in the middle of a TV taping, but we try to be nice to them. And we just - I think last season, at some point we gave them, you know, a nice little, can you see this? There you go. Yeah. A nice little pullover sweatshirt that has our show logo on it. But look at the other side. What does that say?
Chouinard: Patagonia.
Tavis: There you go. So your company actually makes this fleece that a lot of us wear nowadays with our casual stuff. Tell me what makes this particular piece different than...
Chouinard: Well, that jacket's made from 25 soda pop bottles.
Tavis: This jacket right here is made from soda pop bottles.
Chouinard: Yeah. PET bottles. And we're working with a Japanese company now so that when you've worn this thing out, you can give it back to us. And we're gonna bundle it up, send it back to this Japanese company that's gonna recycle it back into its original polymer, and make more jackets and more underwear, just polyester underwear out of it. So we're gonna complete the circle on recycling.
Tavis: Wow. Tell me what it does for your employees to work with a company that has that kind of philosophy. I'd like to think that the people that work with me, I say this with all humility, I'd like to think that the people who work with me, and I remind them this all the time. I do more than just, this is not just a TV show or just a radio show or just whatever I do.
I hope that we're making a difference. I hope that we're empowering people and enlightening people and encouraging people. What value do your employees get out of working for a company that isn't just making a product and not even just making a profit, but is actually doing something for the environment?
Chouinard: Well, you know, I have maybe three or four MBAs out of 1,300 employees. So almost nobody that works for me ever wanted to be in business. But they're taking pride in making hopefully the best product, and causing the least amount of harm in making that product.
And then taking a lot of the profits and doing some good with it. So when you have people that are motivated by those things, you can trust them. They're not gonna take advantage of the system, and they're gonna be really passionate and motivated.
Tavis: So what kind of stuff does Patagonia do with its profits?
Chouinard: Well, we take 1% of our sales. So whether we make a profit or not, we still have to do that. So last year we were a $240 million company. So we take 2.4 million and we give it to environmental activism. To 350 different organizations that are really working on solving problems, not symptoms, but really problems. So that's what we do with it.
Tavis: I wonder whether or not you think, the environment is something that obviously impacts every one of us. I don't care what race you are, what ethnicity, what religion. I don't care where you live, whether you're rich or you're poor, the environment goes to hell in a hand basket, we all go to hell in a hand basket with that environment.
I wonder whether or not you think that what you are doing, what your company Patagonia is doing is in any way instructive or inspiring for other companies, number one. And number two, do you think that other companies are starting to get it where the environment is concerned?
Chouinard: Yeah, I think there are some other companies that are getting it. I mean, it's certainly not General Motors or Ford - you know, they've still got their head in the sand. But some small companies. And they're realizing that, like David Brower says, "There's no business to be done on a dead planet.' And that's the bottom line.
If you take all of our social, so-called social problems around the world where there's poverty, and you ask enough questions, you'll get to the real cause of a lot of it, which is the destruction of the environment, the destruction of our planet. And so that's what we work on. And we try to support those little organizations that are out there trying to do some good.
Tavis: I could have started our conversation here, but I'm always fascinated when I see someone who has developed this level of consciousness and courage and conviction and commitment to a cause. This didn't come out of the ether. It came from somewhere, so I could have started our conversation here, yet I will end it here. Tell me about your life as a child. Tell me about your mom and them, about your parents. How did you end up being this kind of person?
Chouinard: Well, one of the lessons my parents taught me, I guess, is to never exceed your resources. Basically, you live within your means. Never buy anything on time. And one of the lessons of doing, say, risky sports all your life is that you never exceed your resources. If you do, you go over the edge, you're dead. So it's the same thing with business.
I've tried to run my business as if it's gonna be here a hundred years from now. I'm in no hurry to become a large company. I'm in no hurry to get further in debt or - I want to be a responsible company.
Tavis: Well, a $240 million company. That ain't bad. That ain't the worst.
Chouinard: No, and it's probably just the right size.
Tavis: Just about the right size for you. So because you are so athletically inclined, what all do you do? You surf; you rock climb; what else do you do?
Chouinard: Oh, I do all kinds of stuff.
Tavis: Come on, tell me. You surf, you climb rocks.
Chouinard: I fly-fish. I kayak. I play tennis. I was just surfing yesterday.
Tavis: Yeah. You should be on ESPN doing this conversation, not PBS.
Chouinard: I mean, I don't look like a businessman, right?
Tavis: (laughs) You could have been on ESPN, but I'm glad you were on PBS. His name is Yvon Chouinard. He's the founder and owner of Patagonia. His new book is 'Let my People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.' What a wonderful guy. Mr. Chouinard, nice to meet you.
Chouinard: Nice to meet you.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. And the minute Brian wears this out, trust me, he will send it back to you, ask you to redo it, and send it back to him at no cost, knowing Brian. But anyway, glad to have you on. Up next, singer Faith Evans. Stay with us.
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