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Table of Contents

What If We Shopped to Live, Instead of Lived to Shop? (Location 101)

Tags: shopping

Note: .shopping shop to live

so much carbon has been allowed to accumulate in the atmosphere over the past two decades that now our only hope of keeping warming below the internationally agreed-upon target of 2°C is for wealthy countries to cut their emissions by somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 percent a year. There is no precedent for those kinds of reductions within an economic model that requires relentless economic growth to survive.4 What all this means is that our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. (Location 160)

Tags: climatechange

Note: .climatechange our climate and economic systems are at war

What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. (Location 165)

Tags: favorite, economy, climate

Note: .climate .economy the economy needs to continuously grow to avoid collapse. We need to use less natural resources

Do we have a chance in the face of the odds? If we do, it won’t be because we learned how to be “ethical” shoppers. Rather, it will be because we found things to do other than shopping. Like building social and political movements that change the rules of the game. Like deriving deep pleasure from experiences that are not for sale at any price, whether it’s time in nature or time with our loved ones. (Location 167)

Tags: shopping

Note: we need to find things to do other than shopping

To know and not to do is not to know. —Wang Yang Ming (Location 182)

Tags: execution, knowledge, action

Note: .action .knowledge knowledge is useless without action

“to use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” (Location 193)

Tags: patagonia

Note: .patagonia

I’ve been a businessman for almost sixty years. It’s as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. (Location 227)

Tags: lawyer

Note: .lawyer

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. (Location 477)

Tags: simplify

Note: .simplify aim to take away as much as possible

If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.” (Location 706)

Tags: quotes, entrepreneur

Note: .entrepreneur .quotes

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line—and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful. (Location 743)

Tags: favorite, learning, mastery

Note: Mastery takes far more effort than it takes to get to 80%

Primary among the problematic corporate values are the primacy of expansion and short-term profit over such other considerations as quality, sustainability, environmental and human health, and successful communities. (Location 1055)

Tags: short term gains, corporate

Note: Corporates value short term profits over long term sustainability

I had always tried to live my own life fairly simply, and by 1991, knowing what I knew about the state of the environment, I had begun to eat lower on the food chain and reduce my consumption of material goods. (Location 1091)

Consumers become very conservative during recessions. They stop buying fashionable silly things. They will pay more for a product that is practical, multifunctional, and will last a long time. We thrive during recessions. (Location 1149)

Tags: recession

Note: .recession

“Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” (Location 1181)

philosophies

To me, a shirt that has to be treated so delicately has diminished value. Because I think ease of care is an important attribute, I would never own a shirt like that, much less make and sell one. (Location 1227)

Tags: maintenance

Note: Ease of care is an important attribute for a product

The first precept of industrial design is that the function of an object should determine its design and materials. (Location 1267)

Tags: design

Note: Function dictates form

Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf. (Location 1284)

Tags: minimalism

Note: .minimalism owning less stuff reduces our impact on the enviironment

Thoreau’s advice: “I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Location 1292)

Tags: clothes

As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer. This simple act of extending the life of our garments through proper care and repair reduces the need to buy more over time—thereby avoiding the carbon dioxide emissions, waste output, and water usage required to build the new products. (Location 1350)

Tags: sustainability, clothes

Note: .clothes .sustainability keep your clothes for longer

The Dalai Lama says too much choice brings unhappiness. (Location 1403)

Tags: happiness, choice

Note: .choice too much choice brings unhappiness

...maintenance of any product is a chore, and for that reason alone, low maintenance becomes a criterion for high quality. At Patagonia none of us likes to iron or bother with the dry cleaner’s, and we assume that our customers don’t either. We have practical reasons too. You should be able to wash travel clothes in a sink or a bucket, then hang them out to dry in a hut and still look decent for the plane ride home. (Location 1454)

Tags: maintenance

Note: .maintenance

The most responsible way for a consumer and a good citizen to buy clothes is to buy used clothing. Beyond that, avoid buying clothes you have to dry-clean or iron. Wash in cold water. Line dry when possible. Wear your shirt more than one day before you wash it. Consider faster-drying alternatives to 100 percent cotton for your travel clothes. (Location 1460)

Tags: sustainability, clothes

Note: .clothes .sustainability

Buying used clothing and wearing it as long as possible is the most responsible thing you can do. When you give in to fashion trends, you doom used clothes to the trash heap. (Location 1532)

Tags: thrift, clothes

Note: .clothes .thrift

Cotton fields, representing 2.5 percent of cultivated land, use 22.5 percent of chemical insecticides and 10 percent of pesticides used in agriculture. About one-tenth of 1 percent of these chemicals reaches the pests they target.2 Cottonseed and oil are used in human food, fed to cattle, and are not regulated by the FDA. (Location 1578)

Tags: cotton

Note: .cotton

Production Philosophy

The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process. (Location 1783)

Tags: iteration, execute

Note: .execute learn by doing. Trial and error.

Likewise, a rain jacket is better made when the producer understands from the start what the product needs to achieve and, conversely, when the designer understands what processes have to be followed and, finally, when everyone stays on the job and works as a team until it’s done. Michael Kami refers to this team approach as concurrent, as opposed to assembly-line manufacturing, in which responsibility for one part of the process is handed off in stages to the next in line. A concurrent approach brings all participants together at the beginning of the design phase. As Dr. Kami points out, only about 10 percent of a product’s costs are incurred during the design phase, but 90 percent of the costs are irrevocably committed. (Location 1798)

Tags: collaboration, agile

Note: .agile .collaboration

You can minimize risk by doing your research and, most of all, by testing. Testing is an integral part of the Patagonia industrial design process, and it needs to be included in every part of this process. It involves testing competitors’ products; “quick and dirty” testing of new ideas to see if they are worth pursuing; fabric testing; “living” with a new product to judge how hot the sales may be; testing production samples for function and durability, and so on; and test marketing a product to see if people will buy it. (Location 1862)

Tags: iterate, test

Note: .test .iterate test ideas early to see if people like them

Again, like the Zen approach to archery or anything else, you identify the goal and then forget about it and concentrate on the process. (Location 1877)

Distribution Philosophy

Marketing Philosophy

The basic tenets of that philosophy are a deep appreciation for the environment and a strong motivation to help solve the environmental crisis; a passionate love for the natural world; a healthy skepticism toward authority; a love for difficult, human-powered sports that require practice and mastery; a disdain for motorized sports like snowmobiling or Jet Skiing; a bias for whacko, often self-deprecating humor; a respect and taste for real adventure (defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive—and certainly not as the same person); and a belief that less is more (in design and in consumption). (Location 2244)

We make certain assumptions about our customers, not just that they are intelligent. We assume that they don’t shop as entertainment, that they’re not out to “buy a life,” that they want to deepen and simplify, not junk up, their lives, and that they are fed up with or indifferent to being targets for aggressive advertising. (Location 2334)

Note: Assume customers dont enjoy shopping and are looking to simplify

Financial Philosophy

It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise, you’re just crazy. (Location 2385)

Tags: crazy ideas, rich

Note: You can be eccentric as long as youre rich

We recognize that we make the most profit by selling to our loyal customers. A loyal customer will buy new products with little sales effort and will tell all his friends. A sale to a loyal customer is worth six to eight times more to our bottom line than a sale to another customer. (Location 2395)

Tags: selling

Note: Selling to a loyal customer is mcuh cheaper than a new customer

Human Resource Philosophy

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. —L. P. Jacks... (Location 2467)

Tags: favorite, life, excellence

Note: Pursue excellence through whatever you do

I cannot imagine any company that wants to make the best product of its kind being staffed by people who do not care passionately about the product. (Location 2481)

Note: Staff your company with people who care about and use the product

If for whatever reason we have another downturn in our business like we had in 1990–91, our policy is to first cut the fat, freeze hiring, reduce unnecessary travel, and generally trim expenses. If the crisis were more serious we would eliminate bonuses and reduce salaries of all top-level managers and owners. Then shorten the workweek and reduce pay, and finally, as a last resort, lay people off. (Location 2706)

Tags: cutcosts

Note: .cutcosts

When there is no crisis, the wise leader or CEO will invent one. Not by crying wolf but by challenging the employees with change. (Location 2727)

Tags: ceo

Note: .ceo

Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water is expected to rise 56 percent above the amount that is currently available. —Maude Barlow (Location 2778)

Tags: water

Note: .water our demand for water is growing at a rate more then twice the rate of population growth

To make a T-shirt requires using seven hundred gallons of water.13, 14, 15 It makes a big difference where that water comes from. It could come from reservoirs that dammed up a river, stopping the migration of fish and displacing hundreds or thousands of poor people. Or it can be grown in an area where there is adequate rain. (Location 3078)

Tags: water

Note: .water

We continue to blame others: the Mexicans for having large families, the Chinese for burning high-sulfur coal, or “the government” for wanting to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, we drive around in our SUVs, shopping and consuming like “good” Americans so the economy doesn’t go south. (Location 3223)

If you want to die the richest man, then just stay sharp. Keep investing. Don’t spend anything. Don’t eat any capital. Don’t have a good time. Don’t get to know yourself. Don’t give anything away. Keep it all. Die as rich as you can. But you know what? I heard an expression that puts it well: There’s no pocket on that last shirt. —Susie Tompkins Buell... (Location 3253)

Tags: mortality, favorite, wealth

Note: .wealth

believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need. (Location 3774)