You can buy a cheap blender that will burn out the first time you try to grind some ice cubes, or you can wait until you can afford a quality one that will last. Ironically, the longer you wait, the less you may have to spend; at my age, it‘s becoming easier to buy only products that will „last a lifetime“.
The Patagonia label is evocative and valued in the marketplace. But we don‘t use it as a crutch for mediocre design. A product independent of the label should stand on its own merits and not rely on the label to „carry“ it.
We are a product-driven company. That means the product comes first and the company exists to create and support our products. (…) When you look closely at some companies, it may be a surprise to find that not all of them are in business to produce a tangible product or service. The real product may be the company itself, which is just being grown to be sold one day.
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.
We do not create artificial demand for our goods by advertising in Vanity Fair or GQ or on buses in inner cities, hoping to get kids to buy their black down jackets from us instead of The North Face or Timberland. We want customers who need our clothing, not just desire it. We don‘t want to be a big company. We want to be the best company, and it‘s easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company.
Employees take advantage of this policy to catch a good swell, or go bouldering for an afternoon, pursue an education, or get home in time to greet the kids when they climb down from the school bus. This flexibility allows us to keep valuable employees who love their freedom and sports too much to settle for the constraints of a more regimented work environment. (…) Maybe a few people take advantage of our flextime and our Let My People Go Surfing policy, but none of our best employees would want to work in a company that didn‘t have that trust.
We are the people we have been waiting for.
Autor: Yvon Chouinard