You Have To Remember This

I Took A Dozen Of Our Top Managers To Argentina, To The Windswept Mountains Of The Real Patagonia, For A Walkabout. In The Course Of Roaming Around Those Wild Lands, We Asked Ourselves Why We Were In Business And What Kind Of Business We Wanted Patagonia To Be. A Billion-dollar Company? Okay, But Not If It Meant We Had To Make Products We Couldn't Be Proud Of. And We Discussed What We Could Do To Help Stem The Environmental Harm We Caused As A Company. We Talked About The Values We Had In Common, And The Shared Culture That Had Brought Everyone To Patagonia, Inc., And Not Another Company.

During The Sixties, All The Risk-type Sports Were Very Popular, Because Everybody Was Rebelling Against Their Parents, Or Rebelling Against The Whole System. But Those Days Are Over. This Is The Day Of Conservatism.

When I Die And Go To Hell, The Devil Is Going To Make Me The Marketing Director For A Cola Company. I’ll Be In Charge Of Trying To Sell A Product That No One Needs, Is Identical To Its Competition, And Can’t Be Sold On Its Merits. I’d Be Competing Head-on In The Cola Wars, On Price, Distribution, Advertising, And Promotion, Which Would Indeed Be Hell For Me. Remember, I’m The Kid Who Couldn’t Play Competitive Games. I’d Much Rather Design And Sell Products So Good And Unique That They Have No Competition.

The More You Know, The Less You Need.

We're Not Citizens Anymore. We're Consumers. That's What We're Called. It's Just Like Being An Alcoholic And Being In Denial That You're An Alcoholic. We're In Denial That Each And Every One Of Us Is The Problem. And Until We Face Up To That, Nothing's Going To Happen.