📰 "Why Patagonia's Founder is Giving Away All his Wealth"

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[8:59] SG: "[Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard] has created an empire for himself [...] and he released a statement on Patagonia's website and it's titled, 'The earth is our only shareholder'. [...] It's an open letter to let everyone know about him and his family's future plans and how they're planning to structure the company."

[9:35] SG: "In the letter he does explain that he did think about selling his company and then just giving the profits away to charity. And he just outright stated that he would never be able to trust the next owner of the company to put environmentalism and the planet at the center of everything that they do. Now instead what he's going to do is he's going to give all his voting shares and it's going to go to a new trust that will protect the company's values."

[10:15] SG: "Chouinard and his family [...] donate 2% of all of the company stock and all of decision making authority to a trust that will oversee Patagonia's mission and values. And that really just ensures and provides that safety net for them leaving the company. The other 97% of Patagonia stock is going to go to a nonprofit called The Holdfast Collective which 'will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities as quickly as possible'."

[11:27] SG: "[Chouinard] says that 'instead of going public, you could say we're going to purpose. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we will use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth'."

[14:54] SK: "[Patagonia has] done so much work around the environment from things like in 1988 they helped her to restore the Yosemite Valley, they use recycled materials primarily in their clothing, they have a lifetime return and repair on their equipment, [...] they have donated over $90 million in grassroots activist organizations over the past 35 years, they've done community projects. But the thing that I really love about them is they walk the walk, as opposed to talk the talk when it comes to environmental impact."

[15:40] SK: "Patagonia literally shares their patented product innovations, like bio rubber, [with] other companies. [...] They even share their business strategies, like their micro solar power generation products. [...] They don't worry about the future of their competition, they worry about the future of the environment."

Rating: ⚡⚡⚡

Additional Links:
Article: "Patagonia founder gives away company: ‘Earth is now our only shareholder’" (Washington Post, 2022)