Cuando se junta el emprendimiento y la pasión: Historia de Patagonia

Every week with the Tetuan Valley team we meet to share a space where we tell each other things that interest us. This helps us to get to know each other better, but we realized that we tell things that can also be of interest to others, because we decided to work in a startup community for a reason, we have many things in common.

The day it was Tomás Burgaleta's turn, ops analyst, was the day we decided that this could be shared beyond a team meeting, and it was with that objective in mind that we wrote this article.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. It is a story of entrepreneurship and passion and if you are here it is because there is some of that in you too.

Without further ado, we begin...

Among all the brands and businesses that you can find in the market today, there are those entrepreneurs who more than creating a product, capture a passion, a way of understanding life in their product.

Today we are going to tell you about an inspiring venture, namely a story of adventurers.

Thus began the story of a company with vision

Yvon Chinouardwas a great climber in the 60s. In those years, it was the beginning of sport climbing. At the beginning the materials were extremely fragile, so Yvon decided to make his own material and it was such a success that he began to sell it to other climbers.

His passion began in high school when his interest in hawks made him descend cliffs to access the nests. He came from a humble family and during his youth he had a precarious life. He spent his time climbing, surfing and selling this climbing gear to support his expenses. For weeks, he lived on as little as 50 cents a day, buying dented cans of tuna for cats in San Francisco and supplementing them with oatmeal, potatoes and animals he hunted. 

In 1968, he embarked on an adventure with 3 other crazy people like him. Their idea was to go by van from California to Patagonia, to reach the summit of the famous Fitz Roy peak. This trip had a very positive influence on his life, and is captured in this documentary that we recommend you watch: Mountains of Storm.

Yvon and Doug on their Patagonian expedition in 1968

A small aside

The national parks bought by Douglas Thompkins

Among those madmen was a certain Douglas Thompkinswho had just sold his company, The North Face. After the trip, Doug fell in love with the Patagonian wilderness, realizing that it was a land threatened by industrial growth and unprotected. So after having sold another clothing company in 1989, he took advantage of the great economic benefit he obtained from that sale and dedicated himself to buying wild lands in the Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia. 

Purchased more than 810,000 hectares of wilderness areas in Chile, becoming one of the largest private landowners in the world. He focused on the creation of parks, wildlife recovery, ecological agriculture and activism, with the aim of saving biodiversity.

In the end, by wanting to conserve that nature, Doug has ensured that Patagonia remains today one of the wildest places on our planet.

But back to Yvon

One of Patagonia's most viral marketing campaigns

After returning from the Patagonian adventure, on a climbing trip in Scotland, he came back with a rugby polo shirt that he started using for climbing, because of its strength and comfort. And, seeing that everyone was asking him about it, he decided to start selling it.

From there, the company started to grow and, despite having to go through major crises, Yvon remained faithful to the idea of selling simple products with a good quality, made to last and be used for adventures, and without putting the environment at risk.

With this vision, true to this idea, among many other things, they launched marketing campaigns such as the one shown on the right.

This ad was placed in the New York Times at the height of Black Friday to criticize today's consumer society. Counterintuitively, Patagonia increased sales in the following years. The brand was a pioneer in implementing the Worn Wear program that allows customers to return clothing when they can no longer wear it and be rewarded for it. In addition, 1% of its total sales annually are earmarked to fight climate change.

In 2022, Yvon decided to donate 98% of Patagonia to an NGO to help in the fight against climate change, which was equivalent to 3 billion dollars. Yvon did not do it for the money but for his dream, as he is a happy man who continues to climb, fish and surf. His philosophy of life and entrepreneurship is captured in the book "Let my people go surfing.Let my people go surfing: The education of a reluctant businessman"which we recommend you to read.

Accomplishing your goals is amazing, but accomplishing them while remaining true to your principles creates unique existential value and satisfaction. This, as seen in Patagonia's numerous crises, reflects that it inevitably leads to a more complicated path and your chances of financial success diminish. But should success be measured only in turnover and break-even metrics? Shouldn't we take into account the satisfaction and value generated in our environment? Perhaps, success is not in achieving a goal, but in having done your duty to try to achieve it.

Yvon's vision to translate a vital and genuine objective into his business is the key to his success. He has managed to make Patagonia fall in love with his mission and find great resilience, and this is transmitted to the team. Those who remain in love with the project will not stop until they try, as they have a higher, deeper motivation, as their motivation goes beyond financial results, it is personal fulfillment.

Yvon and Doug's stories are different ways of understanding entrepreneurship, Yvon made his business a life goal and Doug sold to fulfill his. But at the same time, they are similar ways of living a life, focusing on fulfilling their life goals.

The resilience of these vital projects comes from passionate minds that never betrayed their principles and never stopped believing in their mission. So we hope these stories will inspire you to achieve your goals!

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