Patagonia

Patagonia, which has been a private company since it was founded in 1973, has announced plans to allocate all profits that are not re-invested back into the ...

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who sits on Patagonia’s board, said businesses “can’t continue to adhere to the prevailing economic model” if the climate and nature crises are to be solved and social issued tackled. Chouinard has stated that the decision to go further, creating the Trust and Collective today, was taken to frame Earth as the company’s only shareholder. Those overseeing the Trust will vote to ensure the company actions are aligned with its stated commitments on environmental and social impact.

Moving forward, Patagonia's profits that are not re-invested into the business will be donated to a group of nonprofit organizations fighting climate ...

Patagonia expects to generate and donate about $100 million annually depending on the health of the business. After informing its employees on Wednesday about this move, the company updated its website to state that "Earth is now our only shareholder." It will be overseen by members of the family and close advisors. Even public companies with good intentions are under too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility. Another path was to take the company public. One option was to sell Patagonia and donate all the money.

"We're making Earth our only shareholder," Yvon Chouinard wrote Wednesday in a letter.

[Amtrak cancels all long-distance trains ahead of potential railway strike](/2022/09/14/amtrak-cancels-long-distance-trains-labor-dispute) It would be the first U.S. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source." [potential railroad workers strike](https://www.axios.com/2022/09/12/possibility-of-railway-and-port-strikes-threaten-supply-chain-recovery). [AP](https://apnews.com/article/explosions-education-mark-zuckerberg-northeastern-university-8402d28b64bcb8fd032486f56ce478fa?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_8). [climate change](https://www.axios.com/energy-environment/climate-change).

The company has restructured, placing ownership in a trust and vowing to spend an estimated $100 million a year to fight climate change.

Instead of going public, the brand has “gone purpose.” And because the Patagonia Purpose Trust is the business’s controlling shareholder and must adhere to the company’s environmental mission, the brand now claims that Earth is its “only shareholder.” “If we have any hope of a thriving planet 50 years from now, it demands all of us doing all we can with the resources we have. For a hint at the type of aggressive advocacy Patagonia is likely to go after, Kenna urged people to remember this is the brand that called on its community to “ Companies that create the next model of capitalism through deep commitment to purpose will attract more investment, better employees, and deeper customer loyalty. “[We] are concerned that, with shares more broadly distributed, the company would become overly cautious about undertaking risks in the pursuit of its environmental goals,” Chouinard wrote in 2012. The company shared the news with employees in a virtual town hall this morning. In his book The Responsible Company, published a decade ago, Chouinard outlined his concerns about employee and public ownership, arguing that wider control of the company’s shares might have prevented a change like the one announced today. “They wanted us to both protect the purpose of the business and immediately and perpetually release more funding to fight the environmental crisis. Under the cover of a project code name—Chacabuco, a nod to a fishing location in Chile—they began brainstorming solutions in mid-2020. “One option was to sell Patagonia and donate all the money,” he wrote in a letter published today. 501(c)(4)s are allowed to make unlimited donations to political causes, meaning the Chouinards get no tax benefit for money that flows to the nonprofit. The charitable outlay of the new company will be roughly $100 million a year.

Patagonia Chair Charles Conn explains why the company's owners are donating all their equity to climate and conservation efforts.

Companies have responsibilities to their workers, customers, the environment, and yes, their investors. It’s the future of business if we want to build a better world for our children and all other creatures. We are directing all the value created by the company to specific conservation projects and advocacy. Over time, the market will continue to work and responsible purpose-led companies will attract more investment, better employees, and deeper customer loyalty. Great companies are loved and respected for their values and commitments to their communities in addition to what they make, not for the creation of shareholder wealth. A few years ago, we changed our mission to something both simple and hard: We’re in business to save our home planet. Leading institutions like The Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum have worked to re-brand shareholder capitalism as stakeholder capitalism, adding responsibilities to workers, the environment, and society. And we transparently report our progress to our communities. Similar efforts by accounting bodies and think tanks seek to develop general accounting standards for measuring companies’ social and environmental impacts that could be required for future company reporting. The flowery language of annual reports is simply incompatible with standard forms of incorporation that require companies to only maximize shareholder returns. The question now is not whether but how far the pendulum has shifted towards responsibility and purpose. For 50 years there has been an impassioned debate about the appropriate aims and responsibilities of companies.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is giving away the multibillion-dollar outdoor apparel company, the climber-turned-businessman announced on Wednesday.

The trust, which was created to protect and maintain Patagonia’s values, will have final say on key decisions. “Instead of ‘going public,’ you could say we’re ‘going purpose,’” Chouinard said. Despite giving away ownership, Chouinard said he and his family will continue to guide the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective and sit on the board of directors. The remaining 2 percent of the company — the voting shares — will go to the Patagonia Purpose Trust. As part of the shift, Chouinard committed Patagonia to giving away all its excess profits to efforts to fight the environmental crisis. Chouinard and his family are transferring ownership of Patagonia to a trust and nonprofit in an effort to maintain the company’s environmentalist values and increase its contributions toward fighting climate change.

The billionaire founder of the outdoor fashion retailer Patagonia says he has given away his company to a charitable trust. Yvon Chouinard said that under a ...

Mr Chouinard is not the first entrepreneur to give wealth away. Instead, the Chouinard family, which always owned the company, has transferred it to two new entities. But he said both options would have meant giving up control of the business.

Patagonia is a private company based in Ventura, California, that sells outdoor apparel and equipment. Yvon Chouinard founded the company in 1973. Patagonia ...

We believe this new structure delivers on both and we hope it will inspire a new way of doing business that puts people and planet first.” This nonprofit will make sure that the company’s annual profits, about $100 million per year, will be used to “protect nature and biodiversity, support thriving communities and fight the environmental crisis.” Those entities will ensure that the company’s values will continue to be upheld — and that Patagonia’s profits are used to combat climate change.

Yvon Chouinard has always said Patagonia's mission was to protect nature. In donating his shares to a trust and a nonprofit, he ensures his life's work will ...

The same year, Patagonia [pulled all ads](https://hypebeast.com/2020/6/patagonia-facebook-instagram-advertizing-stop-hate-for-profit) from Facebook and Instagram and continues to boycott them for failing to “take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform.” [Don’t Buy This Jacket](https://www.patagonia.com/stories/dont-buy-this-jacket-black-friday-and-the-new-york-times/story-18615.html)” to bring attention to the company’s Common Threads Initiative, which allows consumers to buy or trade in used Patagonia clothing. [for the first time](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/10/19/the-energy-202-in-what-may-be-a-first-patagonia-endorses-two-senate-candidates/5bc8b2fb1b326b7c8a8d1a67/), including Sen. Come along for the ride](https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2022-04-28/clean-energy-tour-of-the-american-west-boiling-point) The company also [helped launch](https://www.patagoniaworks.com/press/2018/9/23/vsq7hma2xculhildditq1tkp5sezya) the “Time to Vote” initiative, which resulted in more than 1,000 companies committing to giving their employees enough time to vote on election day. Former CEO Rose Marcario also announced the company would [donate $10 million to climate change groups](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-urgent-gift-planet-rose-marcario/) — the amount of taxes Patagonia didn’t have to pay because of corporate tax breaks during the Trump administration, she said. Two years later, Patagonia began [exclusively using 100% organic cotton](https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/organic-cotton.html) — grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or GMO seeds. In 2018, the company changed its mission statement to something plain and direct: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” In more recent years, its environmental activism has extended directly into the political sphere as well. 1989: Together with REI, the North Face and Kelty, founded the Conservation Alliance, which collects membership dues from companies to distribute to grass-roots environmental organizations. A year before its official founding, he gave desk space to a young activist who fought to protect the Ventura River from a commercial development near the river’s mouth. Chouinard and his family transferred their voting stock to the newly established Patagonia Purpose Trust, which will ensure that Patagonia maintains its commitment to corporate responsibility and donating its profits. The Ventura-based outdoor apparel company was founded on Chouinard’s love of the great outdoors.

Yvon Chouinard, the billionaire founder of the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, said on Wednesday he is giving away the company to a trust that will use its ...

The trust will be overseen by members of the family. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

The founder of the outdoor brand Patagonia has relinquished his ownership in the business and directed its profits to fight climate change.

The company "will keep doing its best to be a great employer." The Patagonia brand, Hayes noted, charges a premium, in part, because of the values it represents. Each year the money we make after reinvesting in the business will be distributed as a dividend to help fight the crisis." We’re making Earth our only shareholder," Chouinard, 83, said in the statement. "The concept of putting this together in a new structure and being experimental and bold is exactly the kind of innovation we need to be trying," Hayes said. In a question-and-answer section appended to Chouinard's letter, the company said Patagonia continues to be a for-profit business as

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard says he will give his company over to a trust, with future profits being donated to causes fighting climate change.

"Even public companies with good intentions are under too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility." The other option was to become a publicly traded entity. He added, "Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source.

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, has put the entire stake in the company into a trust and nonprofit that will focus on combatting climate change.

(This will stay as part of the business model even under the new ownership changes, Patagonia said in a statement.) In response, he introduced new aluminum chockstones, called Hexentrics and Stoppers, which cannibalized the sales of pitons and led to the further success of his business. Economists of this school believe that without the incentive to maximize shareholder returns, businesses wouldn’t succeed and might lose focus. The Holdfast Collective will distribute an annual dividend from any cash that is not reinvested in Patagonia to fight the environmental crisis, protect undeveloped land around the world, and advocate for causes and candidates in politics. Patagonia’s entire voting stock, which was once held by the Chouinard family and only represents around 2% of overall shares, was placed in a newly established entity known as the Patagonia Purpose Trust. He notes that shareholder capitalism thinks goals other than profit will confuse investors. In his youth, he reportedly lived out of his car and ate damaged cans of cat food. Under the new model, Patagonia will—like a typical business—continue to seek to maximize its profits and compete with other outdoor clothing retailers. He founded Patagonia in 1973 to reflect his idealistic priorities, and was a first mover in sustainability and stakeholder capitalism. “What a disaster that would have been,” wrote Chouinard. Today he can be found in his modest homes in Ventura and Jackson Wyoming, wearing raggedly old clothes, driving a Going public would still allow Chouinard to sell off his shares and donate the proceeds to charity, but that would leave the direction of the company to the public market.

Every year, after reinvesting in the company, the money Patagonia makes will be given to a nonprofit to fight the climate crisis, the company says.

The family will pay about $17.5 million in taxes on the gift to Patagonia Purpose Trust. We’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth." According to [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html), Patagonia sells more than $1 billion in apparel annually. [The New York Times reports](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html). That leaves the other 98% to the Holdfast Collective, who holds all of the nonvoting stock. "While we’re doing our best to address the environmental crisis, it’s not enough.

Yvon Chouinard cedió la propiedad de la compañía que fundó hace 49 años. Ahora todas sus ganancias se utilizarán para salvar el planeta.

“Si se eliminan todos los incentivos financieros, la familia no tendrá ningún interés en el negocio, excepto el anhelo de los buenos viejos tiempos”. Y Holdfast Collective también podrá aprovechar el financiamiento de activistas de base que ha caracterizado a Patagonia, pero también puede cabildear y hacer donaciones a campañas políticas. Algunos expertos advierten que sin que la familia Chouinard tenga una participación financiera en Patagonia, la empresa y las entidades relacionadas podrían perder el foco. “No respeto el mercado de valores en absoluto”, dijo. “Estaba en la lista de multimillonarios de la revista Forbes, y eso realmente me molestó”, dijo. “En ese momento nos dimos cuenta de que hablaba en serio”. “En mis más de 30 años de planificación patrimonial, lo que ha hecho la familia Chouinard es realmente notable”, dijo. Como los Chouinard donaron sus acciones a un fideicomiso, la familia pagará alrededor de 17,5 millones en impuestos por la donación. Ambas organizaciones fueron creadas para preservar la independencia de la empresa y garantizar que todas sus ganancias (unos 100 millones de dólares al año) se utilicen para combatir el cambio climático y proteger las tierras no urbanizadas en todo el mundo. Barre Seid, un donante republicano, es el único otro ejemplo reciente de un rico empresario que donó su empresa a causas filantrópicas y políticas. Pero los Chouinard, que controlaron Patagonia hasta el mes pasado, ya no son dueños de la empresa. “Vamos a donar la cantidad máxima de dinero a las personas que están trabajando activamente para salvar este planeta”.

Patagonia es una empresa privada con sede en Ventura, California, que vende ropa y equipos para actividades al aire libre. Yvon Chouinard fundó la compañía en ...

"Querían que protegiéramos el propósito del negocio y que liberáramos de forma inmediata y perpetua más fondos para combatir la crisis ambiental. Esas entidades se asegurarán de que se sigan defendiendo los valores de la empresa y que las ganancias de Patagonia se utilicen para combatir el cambio climático. "Hace dos años, la familia Chouinard nos desafió a algunos de nosotros a desarrollar una nueva estructura con dos objetivos centrales", dijo el CEO de Patagonia, Ryan Gellert, en el comunicado de prensa.

Si tenemos alguna esperanza de un planeta próspero... será necesario que todos hagamos lo que podamos con los recursos que tenemos”, afirmó en una carta ...

"Nunca quise ser un hombre de negocios. En ella, el empresario estadounidense anuncia su decisión de donar la empresa que fundó hace casi medio siglo a la lucha contra el cambio climático. "Habría sido desastroso. Un anuncio célebre de la compañía fue el titulado "No compres esta chaqueta", en el que se pedía a los consumidores considerar el impacto de sus compras en el medio ambiente. El 100% de las acciones con derecho a voto de la empresa se transferirán a un fideicomiso, Patagonia Purpose Trust, creado para proteger los valores de la empresa; y el 100% de las acciones sin derecho a voto serán entregadas a Holdfast Collective, una organización sin fines de lucro dedicada a combatir la crisis ambiental y defender la naturaleza. "En lugar de extraer valor de la naturaleza y transformarlo en riqueza para inversores, estamos utilizando la riqueza que genera Patagonia para proteger a la fuente de toda la riqueza", afirma el empresario en su carta.

Yvon Chouinard, un amante de la escalada que se convirtió en multimillonario gracias al negocio que fundó en 1973, explicó en un comunicado por qué lo hizo.

Su firma se erigió como pionera del movimiento de empresas B con un ojo puesto en reducir su impacto ambiental. [Que los políticos chilenos escuchen o no a su pueblo da una idea de las posibilidades futuras para el respeto de las instituciones en el resto de la región](/america/opinion/2022/09/15/america-latina-y-la-democracia-vulnerant-omnes-ultima-necat/) Esta es otra manera que hemos encontrado para hacer nuestra parte”, señaló el empresario.

Yvon Chouinard, the billionaire founder of outdoor apparel maker Patagonia, is giving his $3 billion company away for a greater cause: fighting climate ...

[recognized Patagonia](https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/us-outdoor-clothing-brand-patagonia-wins-un-champions-earth-award) for its commitment to environmental sustainability and advocacy. The company, which Chouinard founded in 1973, is worth $3 billion, [according to the New York Times.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html) "Despite its immensity, the Earth's resources are not infinite, and it's clear we've exceeded its limits," Chouinard wrote on Wednesday. As part of those efforts, Patagonia sources eco-friendly clothing materials and annually donates 1% of its total sales to grassroots activists. [net worth](https://www.forbes.com/profile/yvon-chouinard/?list=rtb/&sh=2a3f5d474fb5), as of Thursday morning. He was also a craftsman who made climbing gear and apparel for himself and his friends. In the 1960s, he was a pioneering rock climber in California who lived out of his car and ate damaged cans of cat food he purchased for 5 cents apiece, the Times reported. We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the crisis while keeping the company's values intact." We can save our planet if we commit to it." "The Patagonia Purpose Trust ... The two entities will ensure that all of Patagonia's profits go toward combating the climate crisis and protecting undeveloped land across the world, the company announced on Wednesday. [expects](https://www.patagoniaworks.com/press/2022/9/14/patagonias-next-chapter-earth-is-now-our-only-shareholdera) to generate and donate roughly $100 million in profits annually, depending on the health of the business, the company said.