The Anti-marketers

THE BEST PLACE TO BEGIN IS AT THE beginning," you read upon opening the catalog.

If you've already skimmed the inside cover, you know you're getting the self-told story of the woman who picks the photos -- the alluring, real-life photos -- that the catalog's pages display. If you haven't skimmed it, you don't know what you're reading. But you like it. It's fun. You go on:

"I had been in Bangkok looking at silks for Calvin Klein . . . when I had the impulse to puddle jump up to Katmandu, just to see the place. It was April Fool's Day, and I was in the lobby at the Yak and Yeti sipping a G & T when this guy sits down next to me.

"'My name's Rick Ridgeway, and I'm here doing a story on Mt. Everest National Park for National Geographic.'

"I told him I was there goofing off, so immediately he invites me to join him on his three week trek.

"'I've got wads of rupees in my expense account, and I'll hire you an army of Sherpas. We'll sip Remi Martin in Namche Bazar and dine on yak steak on the Khumbu Glacier.'

"'But the farthest I've ever trekked,' I protested, 'is from a cab on Fifth Avenue into the front entrance of Bergdorf-Goodman."

Turns out she doesn't go (no flat shoes handy), a turn of events to which she attributes her eventual marriage to the fellow and her subsequent employment with the fellow's "buddy Yvon," founder of the company she's now dramatizing with "image photographs." The photos come from everywhere, this Jennifer Ridgeway is telling you. "But we're still waiting for anyone to send to our dream shot. We'll pay triple, maybe even quadruple. What we really need is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, dressed in a Pataloha Tropical Fish shirt, cigarette holder in mouth and visor down over eyes, shooting pool with Teddy Kennedy.

"Now that's an image shot."

Welcome to Patagonia Inc., where even the catalog seems to go out of its way not to sell the expensive, high-performance outdoor clothes for which the company is best known. It may be the onoy catalog in the mail-order business with toll-free numbers for outdoor guide advice (rock climbing to kayaking), but a toll line for taking orders. Wanna chat? It's our dime. Wanna buy? The tab is yours. Commerce, it's clear, comes second.

With employees, it doesn't even rank that high. For example, a visitor asked marketing manager Shirley Aitchison why you never see the word "new" in the catalog. She reacted as though struck.

"We would never use that word," said Aitchison. "First, if you're one of our customers, then you've gotten the catalog for a while, and you'll know if it's a new item. We don't have to insult your intelligence.

"Second, the word new is too much of a hard sell for us. If you say something is new, you're implying that people should buy it," she adds, "and we would never do that."

Now if this were some small bare-feet-and-flowers operation left over from the '60s, you'd understand Aitchison's attitude. But it isn't. With a projected $70 million in revenues for the year ending June 30, 13-year-old Patagonia is one of the stars of the mail-order universe.

The visitor -- instantly recognizable by the fact that he is the only person in the company's sprawling, yellow-painted compound wearing a tie, let alone a suit -- finds this success intriguing. Aitchison and her colleagues, however, are clearly bored -- and sometimes downright hostile -- when asked about such pedestrian things as sales, earnings, and inventory turns.

Forget numbers. They want to talk about the quality and technical performance of their clothes -- clothes intended, literally, to meet the rigors of climbing K<2> or of sailing the Atlantic in a one-person boat. (Activities routinely undertaken by some of Patagonia's most dedicated customers.)

And they want to talk about art, specifically the design and makeup of their catalog, which to their credit could be the most spectacular ever assembled by a mail-order merchant. The catalot, it turns out, is also the perfect expression of the company. Through it, Patagonia speaks not only to its patrons but to itself. Catalog as employee training manual. As corporate manifesto.

It is our guidebook to Patagonia's soul.

As the Yak and Yeti scene attests, the catalog is, to say the least, different -- but then so is the rest of Patagonia. The company does almost no advertising. It limits the number of stores that may sell its clothes, and it steadfastly refuses to broaden its line. If the company can't exploit the latest in technology to make an item that can stand up to strenuous outdoor activities, then the item doesn't get made. And if that means Patagonia -- named after the region at the tip of South America -- won't be the next Limited, or even the next Esprit, so be it. Nobody professes to care. "This company does not exist for the sole purpose of making money," says president Kristine McDivitt.

But ironically, this seemingly antibusiness bias has produced something every company wants and few have achieved: focus. Patagonia employees know what is considered important -- producing high-quality, extremely durable clothing that you could wear to scale Kilimanjaro (even if 60% of the customers will come no closer to the climb than dreaming about it over a glass of Chardonnay). And equally important, it tells the staff what not to worry about: being the lowest-cost producer or revving up sales.

At the center of this company culture is the catalog. It is the twice-yearly reflection of what Patagonia believes. ("Function first. Everything else springs from that.") While employees talk of quality, utility, and performance, it is the catalog that spreads the word through text, charts, and diagrams. There are two product-free pages on fabric specs and the question of "breath-ability"; another on the technical makeup of Capilene underwear. And of course there are the brief "essays," such as the one that opens this story and that probably says more about "Patagonia-ness" than would any layout of clothes. It, too, is part of focus: Patagonia as state of mind.

Odd? Yes, but extremely effective. Customers write. They send pictures by the thousands. And Lord, how they buy. Patagonia's average order is believed to be well over twice the dollar amount of L. L. Bean's. "Their customers are different," says a company head who once thought long and hard about trying to acquire Patagonia. "It's almost a cult."

If it is, then there must be lots of chief executive officers who's like one of their own. Managerial roles may not come more enviable than the one held by Patagonia founder and chairman Yvon Chouinard (see box below). Chouinard annually spends better than six months out of town -- sometimes far out of town (Antarctica, Bhutan, Belize). Yet Patagonia employees are so clear about the founder's vision that his presence seems strong even when he's gone.