A true gear junkie tells his story

Yvon Chouinard’s book is part autobiography and part business manifesto

In the introductory pages of “Let My People Go Surfing,” author Yvon Chouinard looks back and provides a vivid, condensed autobiography of his early life. It outlines the episode of his family resettling from Maine to California, where early adventures would forge a burgeoning visionary in the outdoors world.

The book, dotted with black-and-white photos, tells how a teenage Chouinard came into climbing via the Southern California Falconry Club and a passion for birds. He honed skills and created strange, homemade clothing, some with thick leather patches stitched on for padding while rappelling rope-over-shoulder off cliffs.

He continued to make his own gear. Hammers and a blacksmith’s forge let him pound pitons from raw iron. He made carabiners and ice axes, but over the years Chouinard’s eponymous company evolved from hardware to clothing, and it took on a new name.

Today, Patagonia is a top brand nearing an annual $1 billion in sales. Chouinard’s book, “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman,” is an inside look at both the business of Patagonia and Chouinard’s peculiar, inventive mind.

The book was first published in 2006, and the new version, published by Penguin Books, is revised and expanded. It costs $20 and is worth a purchase even if you read the first book. Chouinard has edited chapters and added loads of new material.

Beyond its wild tales of the early days, the book serves as a business manual of sorts. It outlines Chouinard’s “philosophies” around topics like marketing, management, product distribution and design.

Case studies roll off the pages, told in lighthearted, firstperson narratives. A recounting after decades of business, Chouinard shares the ups and the downs from the 1970s on, and he provides specifics by naming names and revealing the ad hoc processes and the raw materials Patagonia needed to build its empire (and some that nearly brought it down).

Patagonia is a certified B-Corporation, meaning it is for-profit and legally bound to creating positive impact on society, its workers, and the environment. A chapter at the end is dedicated toward Chouinard and the company’s environmental philosophy, which has evolved over decades.

But a conversation on the environment begins long before the book talks business. Threads around sustainability and an effort to cause “no unnecessary harm” stem from early experiences in Southern California, where piton scars on Yosemite walls and polluted, dammed rivers would shape Chouinard’s worldview.

The company’s latest venture, a business focused on food, is covered in sections. From fish to bison, wheat and beer, the Patagonia Provisions brand is touted as a “new vision of agriculture.”

No doubt, “Let My People Go Surfing” is an amazing marketing piece for Patagonia. But it reads less like a corporate tome and more like an honest look back by a man who’s been around. Grab a copy for its business advice or for its far-reaching lens on work and life.

I loved the first pages, where weird clothing dominates and iron is pounded in a shed. They climb wild cliffs around the world, leaving work for weeks and months at a time. Chouinard is entertaining and inspiring, a self-proclaimed anti-business businessman with an original, always-evolving outlook on what it means to make money, sell clothing, hike, paddle, climb and be alive.