Mainly, my job is to be on the outside and bring ideas into the company and forge change. Most people hate change--it's threatening. I thrive on it. Lately, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to stay competitive with the many other companies out there that specialize in one sport. We're a generalist outdoor-clothing company--we make clothing for surfers, climbers, skiers, and runners. How do we focus our little surf division so it can compete with the billion-dollar surf companies out there?
I think we could market each product line better if that was our only business. So I'm shaking things up. I am taking all our different product lines, like surf or skiing, and giving the manager of each division way more responsibility than he had before. Now, each manager will handle all the buying. Instead of having a general marketing department, each line will have its own marketing person who stays on top of that individual market.
When you have a lot of independent people working for you, you can't tell them what to do, or you will get a passive-aggressive response. Instead, you have to build a consensus. My job is to communicate why the change is necessary and how it's the right thing for the company. I do that by holding all-company forums. We wire in our Reno, Nevada, warehouse and offices in Europe and Japan. I encourage people to ask questions then and there or to come see me in my office whenever.
When I'm in the office, I always eat lunch with the staff. We serve a subsidized healthy lunch daily in our café. Not only are we feeding our employees good food, but we are building a community, too. Socializing is important. We also have on-site child care for our employees. That was my wife Malinda's idea, and it was radical when we first introduced it, in 1981. It really does take a village to raise a child, and we don't live in villages anymore. So companies need to be more like villages. I think the kids who come out of here are Patagonia's best products. Some kids with stay-at-home mothers hide behind Mother's skirt if you say hello. The kids here stick their hand out. They're so confident.
These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about ways Patagonia can be even more transparent. When we first started the company, there was no such thing as quality control. Then, Nike got caught in a child-labor issue. We got together with Nike and several other companies and started the Fair Labor Association, which visits factories to check up on labor practices. We also do our own checkups, but it's impossible to be perfect.
Recently, animal-rights activists in Germany accused us of getting our down from geese that were being live plucked. We sent two people to Hungary to check it out. They said, "The good news is, we're not live plucking geese. The bad news is, the geese are being force-fed for foie gras." We didn't cover that up or spin it--we told the truth and found another source of down. It doesn't work any other way. Plus, we want other companies to be more transparent. The only way to lead is by example.
We give away 1 percent of our annual sales to 650 environmental organizations through our 1% for the Planet program. Craig Mathews, the owner of Blue Ribbon Flies, and I came up with the idea in 2001. Today, more than 1,800 companies have joined. Investing in the well-being of our planet makes good business sense.
As a company, we've made a contract with our customers to make clothing as responsibly as possible. That includes asking customers to think twice before they buy anything. Do you really need it, or do you just want it? If you really need it and buy from us, we promise to fix it, no matter what. I know it sounds crazy, but every time I have made a decision that is best for the planet, I have made money. Our customers know that--and they want to be part of that environmental commitment. We're producing a series of videos to show customers how to fix things themselves. We're even going to make a little sewing kit. We want people to feel like that jacket is something they're going to have the rest of their lives. And if it does get worn out, send it back to us, and we'll use it for something else. We want to close that loop between consuming and discarding.
