Billionaire founder of trendy f leece firm gives company away to fight climate change
THE billionaire founder of outdoor clothing brand Patagonia has given his firm to a charitable trust to help fight climate change.
Yvon Chouinard, 83, said that, instead of selling the company or taking it public, he would transfer his family’s ownership to a non- profit organisation where the profits can be used to ‘save’ nature and the planet.
In an open letter posted on the company’s website on Wednesday night, Mr Chouinard said any profit not re-invested in running the business would go into fighting the climate crisis. ‘Earth is our only shareholder,’ Mr Chouinard wrote in the letter posted online.
‘I never wanted to be a businessman. I started as a craftsman, making climbing gear for my friends and myself, then got into apparel.
‘As we began to witness the extent of global warming and ecological destruction, and our own contribution to it, Patagonia committed to using our company to change the way business was done.’
The Patagonia founder told the New York Times: ‘Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people.
‘We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.’
The firms’ clothing has a cult following among eco- conscious famous faces – including Princes William and Harry.
Patagonia will continue to operate as a private, for-profit corporation but the Chouinard family, which controlled the business until last
‘Protect nature and biodiversity’
month, will no longer own it. Ninetyeight per cent of the company’s stock will go to the Holdfast Collective, a non-profit organisation which ‘will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities’.
Two per cent of stock and decision-making authority goes to the Patagonia Purpose Trust.
In his early days as a businessman, Mr Chouinard lived out of his car and ate damaged tins of cat food, before launching climbing equipment company Chouinard Equipment in 1965. It became highly successful and he began using the brand name Patagonia from 1972.
The company’s headquarters are in Ventura, California, and it sells more than $1billion (£871million) worth of outdoor wear and equipment worldwide annually. He now has a net worth of $1.2billion (£1.05million) and the firm he founded is worth $ 3billlion (£2.6billion).
Mr Chouinard and Patagonia have a history of pioneering environmental activism in business.
But they have also attracted controversy, particularly for marketing campaigns that have taken a staunch anti-Trump stance.