Retailer sues Trump to save treasure
THE offices of Patagonia occupy a lowslung complex of stucco buildings in this sleepy beachside town in Southern California. There are solar panels and picnic tables in the parking lot, day care with a jungle gym by the main lobby and easy access to the beach, where employees surf during lunch break. It is a corporate Eden of sorts, where idealistic Californians run a privately held company that sells about $1 billion of puffy down jackets and organic cotton jeans each year.
But on an unseasonably hot and windy Monday morning in December, Patagonia headquarters were transformed into something that resembled a war room. There were emergency calls with Washington lawyers. Court filings were prepared. Web designers remade the company’s home page.
It wasn’t a business crisis that had mobilised the company, however. It was politics.
Hours earlier, US President Donald Trump had announced plans to sharply reduce the size of two national monuments in Utah. Bears Ears, an expanse of red-rock canyons rich with archaeologically significant sites, would be slashed in size by 85 percent, more than 1 million acres (about 405,000 hectares). Another monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, would be reduced by half.
Trump said the decision was about reducing federal overreach. “Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” he said. “And guess what. They’re wrong.”
Yet to the tribal groups and conservationists who had been monitoring the situation, including Patagonia, the decision realised some of their worst fears: that the Trump admin- istration would be waging an assault on public lands and potentially opening up protected areas to drilling and mining.
Patagonia was as ready for this moment as any company could be. For more than 45 years, the company has mixed business and politics to a degree unusual in corporate America. While companies are expected to weigh in on everything from gun control to transgender rights these days, Patagonia has been unapologetically political since the 1970s.
It bills itself “the Activist Company” and publicly advocates for environmental protection, fair trade and stricter labour standards. It supports thousands of grassroots environmental activists and has been involved with Bears Ears since 2012. But until December, Patagonia had never tangled with a president.
That Monday, about 50 Patagonia employees gathered in a conference room to watch Trump’s speech. The mood was somber. Within an hour of the president’s remarks, Patagonia updated the home page of its website. Instead of advertising colourful products, there was a stark message against a black background: “The President Stole Your Land.”
Working with a handful of local groups and the law firm Hogan Lovells, Patagonia filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington.The lawsuit named as defendants Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the secretary of agriculture, the director of the Bureau of Land Management and the chief of the Forest Service. And the argument was simple: The Antiquities Act of 1906 gave presidents the power to create national monuments. But it did not grant the power to reduce them.
“For as much authority as it gave to the president to create these monuments, Congress gave the president no authority to revoke or modify those monuments,” the lawsuit reads. “Congress is the sole authority that can undertake such changes.”
Patagonia’s activism has made the company plenty of enemies over the years. Developers, the fossil fuel industry and lawmakers have all gone after the company, and this time was no exception. As Patagonia ramped up its campaign, the Trump administration hit back. Zinke and Republicans in Congress accused Patagonia of playing politics to sell more clothes, and the hashtag #BoycottPatagonia began circulating.
The barbs only stiffened Patagonia’s resolve. The company’s founder went on CNN and called the Trump administration “evil”. And Rose Marcario, Patagonia’s CEO, made the protection of Bears Ears one of her top priorities.
“We’ve always given to grassroots organisations; it’s part of our DNA,” she said in a recent interview. “But the fight got a lot more urgent after the election. This was totally unheard-of.”
It would have been enough for one day if Patagonia had just been caught up in a public spat with the president. But hours after Trump’s announcement, a more urgent crisis emerged: A brush fire was reported in Santa Paula, California, a small community not far from company headquarters.
The hot, dry Santa Ana winds blowing that day whipped the fire into an inferno, and much of Ventura was soon evacuated. At the very moment Pa- tagonia was preparing to sue the president, its campus was shut down indefinitely and employees fled their homes.
“We did a lot of scenario planning for the lawsuit,” said Corley Kenna, Patagonia’s head of communications. “We didn’t put on the list that life-threatening fires would be happening at the same time.”
Patagonia was founded by Yvon Chouinard, an enigmatic mountain climber with an interest in Zen Buddhism and a passion for the environment. In 1957, he taught himself to blacksmith and began making and selling climbing gear that was less damaging to the rocks he and his buddies were scaling in Yosemite National Park.
Within a few years, he had set up shop in Ventura and was doing a brisk business selling clothing for outdoor enthusiasts. He eventually called the company Patagonia, an homage to the vast mountainous region at the southern tip of South America.
Patagonia developed a cult following and expanded its offerings. But for the most part, the company was a means to an end, a source of funds that enabled Chouinard and his friends to surf, climb and travel their way around the world.
That changed in 1972, when Chouinard attended a city council meeting to hear about development plans along the Ventura River. Under a proposal being considered, the flow of the river would have been changed, and a prized surf break could have been ruined.
At the meeting, it looked as if the development would proceed. Then a young environmental activist, Mark Capelli, took the floor. He presented a slideshow and argued that the proposed changes would harm the birds, water snakes and muskrats in the estuary. The development was halted, the river was protected and the surf break was preserved.
Chouinard befriended Cap- elli and began to support his work, giving free office space to his organisation, Friends of the Ventura River, and helping to fend off several more attempts to develop the river.
That set the template. Patagonia would offer small grants to activists, give in-kind support through marketing know-how and business savvy, and amplify their message with customers. Chouniard also resolved to give 1 percent of Patagonia’s sales to support environmental activism.
“Patagonia has established a unique role in the political and policy ecosystem, and are wiling to be very public about their advocacy,” said Neil Kornze, who was a director of the Bureau of Land Management under President Barack Obama. “They are a group of avid environmentalists who just happen to sell coats.”
Under Marcario’s guidance, Patagonia has also struck out in new directions. It started a venture capital arm, Tin Shed Ventures, named after the metal hut – still standing – where Chouinard once forged and hammered metal, and has invested some $75 million in eco-friendly startups.
It has opened a food business, Patagonia Provisions, selling dried buffalo, lentil soup and beer. It recently activated a social network of sorts, Patagonia Action Works, designed to connect engaged consumers with local environmental campaigns.
And the company maintains a team of 18 people focused on supporting activism and distributing grants. Since 1985, Patagonia has given away some $90 million to environmental causes.
“Science without activism is dead science,” Chouinard said in a recent interview. “We want to fund the little activist organisations that are out there on the front lines, the grandmothers in front of the bulldozers.”