Wilderness Outfitter Patagonia Offers Different Kind of Corporate Climbing : Workplace Playground

The Ventura entrepreneur who once rallied his employees with a speech called “Let My People Go Surfing” is offering some of them job opportunities 1,037 miles from the beach.

Yvon Chouinard, who operates four mountaineering companies under the corporate umbrella of Lost Arrow, announced last week that he will move about half his 60-member mail-order division to Bozeman, Mont., by the fall of 1988.

How many will abandon the surf is yet to be seen, but the move is typical of Chouinard, who has built his $46-million company on the premise that workplace and playground should mean about the same thing.

“It’s sort of like ‘Zen and the art of doing business,’ he says. “If you forget about the end goal, the bottom line, and just worry about having a good, excellent company, the bottom line just comes along.”

The Perfect Playground

Why Bozeman? It’s the perfect playground, Chouinard says, for employees testing out the rugged outdoor sports equipment and clothing that Chouinard makes and sells under the names Patagonia, Patagonia Mail Order, Great Pacific Retail and Chouinard Equipment. Together the firms constitute the third-largest company in Ventura and one of the powerhouses in the booming outdoor-gear trade.

There were other considerations as well: proximity to Chouinard’s home in Moose, Wyo., where he spends half the year skiing, kayaking, fly-fishing and designing and testing equipment; a desire for decentralized growth, and an awareness that Bozeman is an economically depressed place that could use some jobs.

Within five years, the Bozeman division will employ 100 during peak season--most of them local people, company officials estimate.

“The Chouinards aren’t trying to ‘save’ Bozeman, Mont., but they’re concerned about what’s happening. They figure, if that’s where people need jobs, that would be a good place to move,” said Karen Frishman, public relations director.

Although the company is based in Ventura, its products are known for traveling well. Patagonia clothes have outfitted winners of the 1987 America’s Cup and kayakers paddling the Pacific from California to Hawaii. Chouinard’s climbing gear has accompanied climbers to remote ice canyons in Antarctica and alpinists trying to scale Mt. Everest without oxygen.

But mostly the company works at a much lower altitude--about 18 feet above sea level in a converted slaughterhouse on East Santa Clara Street.

In a Ventura economy suffering from the prolonged oil-industry slump, Lost Arrow employs almost 400 people, many of whom work there for the endorphin-charged atmosphere and benefits as much as for the weekly paycheck. Chamber of Commerce officials say Lost Arrow operates the only on-site day-care center in Ventura. More than 60% of the work force is female--including much of the upper management.

Lost Arrow has also forged the way--in spirit at least--for several other mountaineering firms that have settled in Ventura over the years, including Gramicci Products of Oxnard and the Wilderness Group of Ventura.

Innovative Backpack

Like Chouinard, owners of those firms say that fresh air, good surf and open beaches first drew them to Ventura County.

“We had a sailboat up here, and we were tired of the smog,” says Reanne Douglass, who owns Wilderness Group with her husband, Don. In the 1970s, their Alpenlite line was among the first to feature stand-up frame backpacks whose load was supported by a belt around the hips.

Business boomed, and, in 1978, the couple left Claremont for Ventura. Reanne Douglass says that Chouinard, who has lived in Ventura since 1965, “gave us some ideas about where we could find property.”

But the backpack industry has slumped in recent years, forcing the Douglasses to move into smaller quarters, cut their work force by more than half and diversify into day packs and bike packs, which constitute 80% of sales, Reanne Douglass says.

Lost Arrow did more than just inspire Mike Graham, the 30-year-old owner of Gramicci Products. It helped transform him from a self-described climbing bum to a successful Oxnard businessman who expects sales of $1.5 million this year on his line of climbing shoes, hardware and sports clothing.

Graham, a climbing buddy of Chouinard’s, got his start seven years ago when Chouinard asked him to make some climbing harnesses and loaned him $800 to buy equipment.

From there, orders for mountain gear mushroomed, and Graham eventually diversified into clothing and climbing shoes under the name Gramicci Products. He has 35 employees, and although subcontracting for Lost Arrow accounts for half of his work, Graham’s own clothing and shoe business grew 40% last year and is “on the verge of being out of control,” he says.

“I owe it all to Yvon,” Graham says unabashedly.

Ventura a Design Hub

Certainly, Chouinard has placed Ventura County on the mountaineering map as a design hub for innovative sports equipment and clothing. Patagonia ships half a million mail-order catalogues to customers worldwide each spring and fall. It is known throughout the industry for its crisp graphics, literary prose and action photos--the company won’t use professional models--and, last month, the Patagonia catalogue won a gold medal from the trade publication Advertising Age for its design and readability.

Most visitors who tour the Lost Arrow site, a sprawling group of yellow buildings with brown trim, say the firm is more than just a business; it’s a subculture.

Indeed, Lost Arrow’s headquarters is an informal, relaxed place, framed in blond wood and skylights, resembling a cross between a think tank and a bustling health spa.

Bikes on wall racks stand sentinel next to desk-top computers. An outdoor, sand volleyball court adjoins a high-tech research and development lab. Khaki shorts, cotton shirts and sandals are preferred attire, and jogging, cycling and swimming are popular at lunchtime.

Frishman says Chouinard encourages employees to take monthlong “sabbaticals” each year to go mountain-climbing, skiing or traveling.

Even the employee manual grants time off--whether two hours or two weeks--as long as the job gets done. “Yvon believes that for you not to be able to go surfing in the middle of the day is ridiculous,” Frishman says.

70-Hour Weeks for Some

On the flip side, many employees say they work 70 hours a week and develop an emotional commitment to their jobs.

“You’ve got to be a pretty responsible person to handle that kind of freedom. Or else you’re gone,” says Rick Ridgeway, a world-class mountain climber who has known Chouinard for years.

Through his Ventura-based Ridgeway Productions, the climber advises several mountaineering companies, including Kelty. He also writes books, produces climbing documentaries and contributes photography and writing to the Lost Arrow mother ship.

Ridgeway says Chouinard “doesn’t want to separate a person’s work life from their play life. He wants to see the two welded together.”

Chouinard is also willing to take chances on employees, which may be why the turnover rate at Lost Arrow is less than 5%. Kris McDivitt, the chief executive officer, started out in 1972 as a part-time shipper-packer. Peter Metcalf, general manager of Chouinard Equipment, was living out of his van and climbing full-time when Chouinard asked him to head up the expanding mountaineering equipment division.

Before the Bozeman move, Chouinard plans to fly mail-order workers to Montana so they can take a tour and decide whether they wish to move.

“We’re going to send them in winter so they get a realistic view,” Frishman says. No layoffs are planned: those who opt to stay will be relocated in the Ventura plant, Frishman says.

Yet Chouinard says it has become difficult to manage Lost Arrow’s employees in one location, and that’s why he suggested Bozeman.

“I’m a real advocate of very slow growth for Ventura. Now, I’m becoming part of the problem by giving all these people work,” he said.

Explosive Growth

Lost Arrow is experiencing a few growing pains as it evolves from a hot-dogger phenomenon to an adult industry. Explosive growth--Patagonia sales shot up 140% from 1982 to 1983--has forced it for the first time to hire outside experts.

A financial officer was brought in earlier this year, as was a scheduler, and Frishman says several production supervisors are still needed to ensure timely deliveries.

“That’s still our weakest area,” she acknowledges.

Glenn Bischoff, a former editor of Outside Business magazine and spokesman for the National Sporting Goods Assn, says that Patagonia is “No. 1 in the industry . . . perceived as the most fashion-forward company in its market. Anyone buying a Patagonia garment knows they’re getting something that’s going to wear and last,” Bischoff says.

And more people may soon be able to buy direct.

Although Lost Arrow now limits growth to 35% annually so it can meet demand, Chouinard says he plans to expand retail operations. The firm has stores in Salt Lake City, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Francisco and Chamonix, France. A Seattle store will open in November.

There also are plans for up to 15 more stores nationwide, and some in Europe and Japan that may be run as franchises or through joint ownership, says Peter K. Noone, who heads Great Pacific, Lost Arrow’s retail division.

Friends and business acquaintances say Chouinard gets most of his ideas in the wild. He is considered one of the world’s best alpinists, undertaking climbs, often first ascents, in the harshest of conditions. Chouinard is also known for his redesign of conventional mountaineering equipment, ice picks, shoes, kayaks and back country skis.

He drives an ’82 Subaru and a ’79 Toyota, he says. He pays himself a “five-digit salary,” reinvests most of the company’s profits and gives away 10% of pretax profits each year to charities such as Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy and Planned Parenthood, he says.

Along with Doug Tompkins, who co-founded the popular clothing line Esprit de Corps, and Paul Hawken, who owns the upscale gardening tool company Smith & Hawken, Chouinard is one of a new breed of progressive entrepreneurs who has parlayed an unorthodox business philosophy into millions of dollars while maintaining a reputation for high quality.

Not surprisingly, there is much cross-pollination and sharing of ideas: Chouinard and Tompkins climb together; Hawken speaks at Lost Arrow annual meetings.

But the interests of this New Age boss extend beyond both sports and business.

He savors the work of California poet Robinson Jeffers, taking this quote as his motto: “In pleasant peace and security how quickly the soul in a man begins to die.”

Ridgeway, Chouinard’s mountaineering friend, says that Chouinard “always sees the big picture because he’s spent so much of his life hanging off big cliffs where there’s nothing else to think of. It gives you a great framework for putting things in perspective.”

French-Canadian Roots

So did growing up in a French-Canadian family in Lewiston, Me., and speaking no English until his family moved to Burbank when he was 8. Chouinard took to climbing with a passion in his teens, teaching himself blacksmithing so he could make pitons (eyed spikes hammered into rocks as climbing aids) and carabiners (oval snap clips used by climbers to link ropes), which he sold from the back of his car for $1.50 to support his hobby.

For years he lived to climb, crisscrossing the country to find challenging rocks. In 1964, Chouinard was part of a four-man team that led the first successful climb on the vertical North American Wall of El Capitan in Yosemite.

But Chouinard was also a devoted surfer, and by 1965, he was tired of driving from Burbank to the Rincon, a famed Ventura surf spot, for good waves.

So he moved his business to Ventura, hammering out carabiners in a tool shed behind the abandoned slaughterhouse. His innovation: he used aircraft-quality aluminium and chrome molybdenum instead of the soft cast iron traditionally used in Europe.

Then he began importing clothes, rugby shirts and corduroy shorts from England, and forged a successful clothing company called Patagonia, so named because it conjured up images of glaciers, wind-swept peaks and remote fjords. Business has snowballed, but Chouinard prefers to delegate daily management duties while concentrating on plotting growth and innovation, even as he casts his flies into the roiling Wyoming rivers.

But his thoughts never stray far from mountaineering, which Ridgeway calls “a total and ongoing lifetime pursuit” that “permeates and determines everything you hold dear later in life.”

Certainly, that philosophy suffuses the Lost Arrow headquarters in West Ventura.

It inspires Graham’s Gramicci line and Ridgeway’s cottage businesses.

But there are trade-offs.

Says Graham ruefully: “Our work kind of cuts into our climbing, we’ve found.”