Book of the Week: Let My People Go Surfing

29 May 2015

This is another origin story book about Patagonia, a privately held clothing company that specializes in climbing equipment. The previous origin story books focused a lot of the founders, but this one focuses more on the company rather then the founder, Yvon Chouinard. The book describes how everything started from a metal shop making climbing hardware into the large clothing company it is today. Beginnings Many founders get there start by solving their own problems. Yvon liked to go climbing, but he needed equipment for it. As climbers grew dissatisfied with existing equipment, they innovated, made improvements to satisfy their own urges. They worked only as much to fund their next adventure. Selling extra hardware to friends turned into hiring friends to make more hardware. Eventually they branched out into clothing and spun out the hardware divisions. After seeing the damage their climbing equipment was doing to the rock face, they developed new pieces that were non-destructive. They quickly phased out pitons and educated customers about other ways to climb. They were unafraid to take a loss and cannibalize existing sales in order to develop something new and innovative. This started the road to trying to be a business while staying as environmentally self-conscious as possible even if it meant lower profits. Going Global

It was going to be an American company doing business California style in Japan. We hired dirtbag Japanese climbers and kayakers; we hired Japanese women for management positions and didn’t fire them when they got pregnant. We instituted the Let My People Go Surfing flextime policy. At the time IBM in Japan told us that we were the only American company in the country that was doing it on its own.

What’s funny is that early in the book, he points out that there is a difference between a U.S. company doing international business and a global company. You want to tailor yourself to the market, yet the only reason they were successful in Japan is that they did not follow conventions and stayed true to their culture and targeted a niche they were familiar with. Dirtbags live all around the world