Yesterday the World Economic Forum’s Community of Young Global Leaders, in collaboration with Accenture Strategy (NYSE: ACN), awarded Patagonia with the Accenture Strategy Award for Circular Economy Multinational at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters. This award recognizes the notable contributions Patagonia has made to the circular economy, driving innovation and growth, while reducing dependence on scarce natural resources.
This open letter expresses the view of more than 100 leaders of large and small businesses in the outdoor industry, which contributes more than $650 billion annually to the U.S. economy, generates $80 billion in tax revenue and employs more than 6 million people. Together, we represent a huge range of activities - from hiking to hunting and camping to conservation.
Every year, millions of people visit public lands in Utah to climb, hike, ski, hunt and a heck of a lot more. I’ve skied, climbed and fished the wild streams of wild Utah for years. The American people own these lands – and Utah reaps the rewards. Every year, outdoor recreation in Utah drives $12 million in consumer spending and supports 122,000 jobs across the state. Sure, we use these lands for energy and grazing and other things too. But access to the outdoors is the reason why so many of my friends consider Utah the ultimate place to live
Today, President Obama announced the designation of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah and Gold Butte National Monument in southern Nevada. In doing so, the president has boldly protected two places of utmost culture, recreation and conservation value for future generations.
At Patagonia, we believe making great products, earning a profit and protecting our planet are not mutually exclusive objectives. That’s why, in 2013, we launched an investment fund to help like-minded start-ups on a similar mission. Today, we’re announcing a new name for the fund: Tin Shed Ventures (formally $20 Million & Change). We will continue our history of funding, mentoring and connecting entrepreneurs that use business to address environmental problems, just under a new name.
Last week, when we announced we’d give 100 percent of our global retail and online Black Friday sales directly to grassroots nonprofits working on the frontlines to protect our air, water and soil for future generations, we heard from many of our customers calling it a “fundraiser for the earth.” We’re humbled to report the response was beyond expectations: With your help, Patagonia reached a record-breaking $10 million in sales. We expected to reach $2 million in sales—we beat that expectation five times over.
The Gwich’in people of Alaska and Northern Canada have fought for three decades to protect the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and other threats. Today outdoor apparel company Patagonia and non-profit conservation group Alaska Wilderness League released The Refuge, a 15-minute film telling the story of two Gwich’in women who are fighting for their ancestral home and the survival of the wild animals that bring them life. In conjunction with the film, Patagonia has partnered with Care2, the world’s largest social media site for good, to launch a Care2 petition asking Congress to pledge to protect the Refuge’s Coastal Plain as wilderness.
After a twenty year history, Patagonia has moved its Reno outlet store to a historic downtown location. Patagonia has grown to nearly 350 employees in Reno, and so has demand for onsite childcare services. As a result, the Patagonia outlet store moved to downtown Reno to make room for the expansion of the Truckee River Child Development Center, the company’s onsite child care program that opened earlier this year.
We’re just days from Black Friday, one of the biggest consumer shopping days of the year in America. And as people think generously about family and friends, we also want to help our customers show love to the planet, which badly needs a gift or two (and still gets coal every year).
This year Patagonia will donate 100 percent of global Black Friday sales in our stores and on our website to grassroots organizations working in local communities to protect our air, water and soil for future generations. These are small groups, often underfunded and under the radar, who work on the front lines. The support we can give is more important now than ever.
Patagonia’s all-new exclusive re\\\collection is a design experiment using as many recycled materials as possible. Each of the ten styles in the re\\\collection is made with all sorts of recycled materials, including 100% recycled down, 100% recycled wool and 100% recycled polyester with 85% recycled polyester labels, 80% recycled zippers and 50% recycled buttons. The re\\\collection is built with function and warmth in mind, but the pieces have a simple, clean aesthetic and they’re ready to be recycled again when the time comes.
As part of its ongoing Vote Our Planet initiative, Patagonia will close all of its retail stores around the nation, its headquarters in Ventura, its Reno distribution and customer service center on Election Day, Nov. 8, to encourage customers, employees and citizens to head to the polls, champion local environmental issues and engage in civil society.
Patagonia announces the addition of Ryan Shadrin to its senior management team as Vice President of Global Direct to Consumer. In this new role, Shadrin will provide strategic vision and leadership to develop and grow a best in class digital and in store experience for Patagonia customers.
Patagonia announces the addition of Cory Bayers to its senior management team as Vice President of Marketing. In this role, Bayers will engage communities around the world on Patagonia’s best-in-class products, core values based in quality and environmentalism, and broaden its reach as a leader in innovation and responsible practices.
More than 40 million people are directly involved in the global textile manufacturing industry and many are living in the poorest parts of the world. It is no secret that working conditions and wages are often inhumane and unacceptable; frequent news headlines and tragedies in factories remind the world about the dangers these workers face.
Patagonia’s supply chain alone involves nearly 75 factories and more than 100,000 workers worldwide. As a complement to Patagonia’s own robust factory monitoring program, the company has partnered with Fair Trade USA, an organization that has developed a well-established program for ensuring products are made in factories and farms where workers are safe, treated with respect and paid fair compensation for their labor.
Patagonia Provisions, in partnership with Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) in Portland, Oregon, today announced the launch of Long Root Ale, a Northwest-Style Pale Ale made with organic ingredients and Kernza perennial grain. Looking for solutions to repair the food systems that sustain us, Long Root Ale represents another step towards transforming agricultural practices and supporting sustainable farming.
Patagonia’s High Alpine Kit is a tightly integrated layering system—from baselayer to belay parka— designed with acute attention to detail and minimalist design principles for moving efficiently through the Earth’s least forgiving environments. Patagonia asked its alpine climbing ambassadors to imagine, build and test pieces of clothing they could use individually or as components of a system for climbing in high alpine zones. Each piece in the kit is patterned to work seamlessly with the next, creating flawless integration while being simultaneously effective as individual pieces.
Today, Patagonia is launching Vote Our Planet – a major non-partisan environmental campaign urging Americans to vote up and down the ballot to elect officials and support referendums that will defend our planet’s air, water and soil and protect the health and well-being of American families. With the environmental crisis reaching a critical tipping point, Vote Our Planet is designed to rally people in every corner of America to set aside their frustration with America’s divisive political atmosphere and vote purposefully with the environment as their top issue when they head to the polls in November.
Ten years after its original publication, Penguin Books has released a completely revised and expanded edition of Patagonia founder and owner Yvon Chouinard’s classic 2006 memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman – with more than 40 percent new material and featuring a new foreword by activist and author Naomi Klein.
In a groundbreaking new book, Family Business: Innovative On-Site Child Care Since 1983 by Malinda Chouinard and Jennifer Ridgeway, Patagonia reveals how and why the company has offered corporate-sponsored on-site child care for over thirty years, and encourages other companies to do the same. Aimed at business and early childhood leaders, human resources departments and parents, the book presents a case for why providing high quality on-site child care to working families is both good for families and good for the bottom line.
New for Fall 2016, Patagonia introduces the world’s first and only neoprene-free wetsuits made with natural rubber from sources that are Forest Stewardship Council® certified by the Rainforest Alliance. It’s a groundbreaking innovation that doubles down on the company’s initial entry into natural rubber in 2014 with another industry first, and expands Patagonia’s Yulex® wetsuit offering from two to 21 full-length suits for men, women and kids.
