Patagonia - Protecting the Planet while Doing Business
Sustainability in Practice
"Every time I've done the right thing for the environment I made a profit." Yvon Chouinard
Business and social responsibility go hand in hand at Patagonia. Patagonia develops and sells clothes for all kinds of outdoor sports - it all started with climbing tools, but nowadays they make clothes for for skiing, snowboarding, surfing, fly fishing, paddling and trail running.
In an MBA-IM guest talk, Joern Zeller (see photo), a sales representative from Patagonia Europe, told the story of a US-based company that has been a pionieer in Corporate Social Responsibility. The protection of the environment was an objective at an early time - in the 1970s - when for most businesses it has not been an issue yet. 
In 2001, Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, cofounded "1% for the Planet", an alliance of businesses that contribute at least 1 percent of their net annual sales to researched and approved environmental non-governmental organisations. Patagonia has been handling this support for NGOs since 1985 already: more than 400 projects per year profit from this 1%. Patagonia has 1200 employees and sales of 400 Mio dollars.
Patagonia not only manufactures in a sustainable environment-friendly way, they also offer recycling stations in all their shops where the customers can return their worn out Patagonia clothes.
Since Sustainability and CSR are an important part of the MBA program in Pforzheim, Zeller's company presentation demonstrated the practical relevance of these topics.
Text and photos: JS
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