In what turned out to be a hugely disappointing viewing of director Richard Linklater’s latest film, Everybody Wants Some!!, I was forced to focus on the clothing style of college students on the cusp of the 1980s. Attempting to capture the fashion statement of frat boys in 1981, the movie’s characters invariably were seen wearing tight fitting jeans, torso tugging colored t-shirts and similar style gym shorts.
As I watched with interest this parade of dated dress I simultaneously thought back to what I was wearing when I was in college then, and it wasn’t tight jeans. In fact, by 1980, I had for several years started to favor the remarkable, albeit very expensive, clothes from a small clothes company from California, with the long name of the Patagonia Great Pacific Iron Works.
It was my college friend’s father who introduced me to Patagonia. He decided to send us off on a six-month trip to India in 1977 with Patagonia’s famed “stand-up” shorts, which were made by hand in Ventura in what is now referred to as the Tin Shed days of the company. Incredibly tough – they did stand up on their own – those shorts would last for years after being baked by the relentless sun of Maharashtra during our tour of duty with a community development project. Part memoir, part functioning wardrobe, those stand-up shorts would stay with me for at least ten years after that trip.
And from the point on until well into my late 50s, I always found the money to pay for Patagonia clothes. Not only did the shorts hold up, but so did the pants, the shirts, the snow jackets, the fleece vests, the travel blazers, the boxer shorts and the socks. In time, the backpack, the shoes, the bike bag and beachwear were all part or my standard equipment.
Beyond the product, it was also not hard to fall for Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. Well before it became popular, Chouinard had become for me the anti-corporate hero. While building his brand, he was famous for doing the complete opposite of what conventional MBA behavior was required of a CEO. Starting with a lifetime guarantee for everything Patagonia sold to allowing everyone in his company to leave work to take advantage of a good surfing day, Yvon never put profit before pleasure and purpose.
And nothing was a better example of this as when Chouinard decided, single-handedly, in the 1990s that Patagonia would only produce products with 100% organic cotton.
Chouinard did so without any focus groups, without suppliers, or any hint to his employees. He simply thought that was what his company should do. And the consequences of that organic manifesto, particularly in the first two years of its launch, almost killed the company by increasing prices with less demand. But Patagonia not only survived but started another wave of growth.
In 2008, having left a 30-year career in the nonprofit sector and starting a new business, I stopped buying clothes at Patagonia. Not only was my income a 1/5 of what it was, but the fact that due to Patagonia’s quality, most of my wardrobe could be expected to last a few more decades.
And so I ended my role of consumer, but never quite gave up my fascination with the company. Beyond surfing their website, I would periodically find myself in one of their retail stores to check things out.
During these periodic check-ins, I was starting to see some changes that didn’t sit well with me. For one, the use of the Patagonia label started to resemble the size and portion of space used by Goodyear on their blimps. Rather than a discrete logo placement, the word Patagonia is now blasted onto every article of clothing they make. It may seem like a small thing, but when a company feels it needs to push their name ahead of their clothes something is amiss.
How was it possible that Chouinard would permit something like that change? Had he sold the company? He is close to 80 years old now; perhaps he has checked out?
Things change, as do clothes, and while this telltale sign of compromise was disconcerting, I had grown accustomed to unwelcomed paradigm shifts with many businesses over the years.
But Saturday, feeling the summer’s first heat wave, mild as it was, I used a special window to get in and out of Georgetown to visit the Patagonia store there. The mission was to see if the company’s lifetime guarantee was still in effect for a piece of luggage I had whose handle had deteriorated. With two weeks of travel ahead of me this month, I needed to get my “black hole” duffel bag repaired or replaced. If Patagonia could fix it, that would be well worth the cost of a trip to Washington.
Double parking on Wisconsin Avenue, I ran the twenty-year duffle bag into the store in the hope that I could get a quick answer on a repair job but assumed the changing culture of Patagonia would quickly inform me that the bag was beyond repair.
Instead, the fellow at the counter said it might take ten minutes to replace the handle if I had the time. Wow, Really?
So as I watched over my car, the store clerk when into the backroom to perform luggage surgery. And, after ten minutes, I checked in with staff for a status report. The news was not good. The bag I had predated the repair handles they had in stock, and as I was prepared to leave with dashed hopes, the clerk said, without blinking , that one solution might be to simply replace my bag with a current one in the store. Would that sound ok?
Being caught off guard by this remarkable turn of events, I simply nodded my head to indicate that this was a fair deal. And within a few more minutes left the store with a brand new $400 “black hole” duffel free of charge.
As I drove away from DC back to the Shore, that special sense of delight that I had first experienced in India almost forty years ago overwhelmed me again, and I was glad to see Chouinard was still in the saddle. It’s still the same damn company.
Dave Wheelan is the founder and executive editor of the Chestertown Spy and Talbot Spy newspapers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Philip Dutton says
Dave, buying quality over quantity or fashion has always been my preference. In the end, quality provides better service and ultimately value. I had a similar situation not long ago with a Craftsman (Sears) ratchet wrench I bought at least 30 years ago. The ratchet gears finally gave out, so I went to the Sears store in Chestertown to buy another, but took along the old one to see if the Craftsman Lifetime Guarantee was still good. Sure enough, the store didn’t have the exact wrench as mine but ordered it, no charge.
Eleanor Altman says
Sweet!
Carol Mylander says
Nice indeed. When I first moved to Chestertown there was a Patagonia shop on Cross Street!