Transcript: Story Behind Patagonia’s First Ecommerce Store (Bonus)

Host: Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what was your experience back then working at Patagonia?

Guest: Sure, yeah, I know, and I'll try to be efficient, but it, but it's, uh, it's sort of a winding road of how I got there.

Um, I, uh, you know, got out of school before the internet in the early 90s and had worked at a consulting firm and then at bigger firms like AT&T and Mac Cellular.

Um, but when AT&T bought Mac, I knew I didn't want to work in that kind of environment again, and so I started looking for, for something just different, and I got wind of a of a product leadership role at Patagonia at their headquarters in Ventura, California.

So, I wind up getting the job and moving down there in 95.

But it was, I was, I'd sort of gotten exposed to the early, very early days of the internet, uh, in my previous role, and so even though it wasn't part of my job mandate, I started basically agitating for the company to sell, uh, online.

And so the company was and still is owned by its founders, Ivana Melinda Shinard, and they are sort of famously anti-technology. Um, so they, they didn't really want to hear about it, but I, I persisted.

And finally, I said, look, why don't we do this? I'll, uh, let's create a a one-year contract position as head of e-commerce. I'll take that position and I'll build you an online store and if you don't like it, you can fire me and shut it down.

So I tried to de-risk the choice as much as possible.

You know, in the early days of the internet, it's interesting, there there was, you know, this, this was early, everything about this was sort of new and it's hard to play back the tape if you, if you, if you weren't there, uh, at the time.

One of the things that Patagonia had going for it was in addition to being a retailer with its own stores, they sold both wholesale and through their own catalog operation. So they already had a distribution center, customer service operations.

So in, in, in terms of the the actual lift of the of putting them online, it was actually relatively light duty. The biggest decision and the biggest kind of mind shift at the time was what is, what should a brand do online?

What is our, what is our place? What is our responsibility to our customers in the digital medium?

And that was the most interesting set of conversations, which is how does a brand put itself online in a way that is both true to the brand and serves the business interests.

So it was just a great learning opportunity for me to think about that intersection of of brand and business and technology at the very beginnings of kind of the internet era.

Host: Patagonia has such a unique brand identity even today, uh, and it's ironic that it almost become a mascot for venture investors to wear a Patagonia West. So anti-tech, um, how do you see Patagonia as a brand today?

Guest: So, you know, and again this is, you know, interesting to think about different kinds of companies.

One of the reasons why I do what I do is I just believe deeply in, in the power of founders, that founders are extraordinary people and it's the vision and energy of founders that creates great companies.

So the fact that Patagonia has never raised outside capital is, is sort of not really the point.

The fact to me that it's still a founder led business and that the ability to stay true to a vision, uh, through many different kind of business cycles and you know, growth, growth and change in the business and the world around them, that's what's allowed them in my view to continue to hue to a very clear, strong brand identity and not get distracted by, you know, the the way that commercial winds are blowing.

So the the brand I think has always stood for a deep commitment to, you know, quality and to the outdoors as a as a you know, basically preserving, preserving the wild spaces so that we can enjoy them as humans and and doing that in a way that is as, as light impact as it can be on the world.

It's sort of I mean again, ironically, you know, it's a company that sells things and I think they've they've never lost sight of the of the irony of that, which is we are, we are part of the consumer economy and yet in many ways we, uh, we believe that that economy has lots of negative externalities.

And so so sort of walking that knife edge of authenticity while pursuing a business aim, I think it's just a really fascinating kind of case study in what does it mean to build an authentic brand that that that cares for people in the environment in the context of of, you know, late stage capitalism.

It's it's it's not an easy balance to strike.

Host: Also, um, if you look at like what other brands and where fashion as an industry has moved or consumers and like the Zaras and H&Ms where fast fashion is a thing where you use anything for one season or, you know, and then it's out of your closet.

While I think Patagonia is the only one which will offer you, uh, you know, we'll fix your Patagonia vest or sweaters that you have and we want you to own it for as long as you can.

I think I haven't seen any other brand do that because it's anti, you know, anti-sales mentality, right? You want to sell more versus sell less.

Guest: Exactly. No, and I think if you were driven purely by market forces, let's say it was a public company or owned by shareholders that just wanted to maximize return, you wouldn't do things like that.

But because it's still owned by the founders, they have the freedom to pursue things that are authentic to them as, as humans and their values, um, but allow them to sort of, you know, find find a middle path in in a in a world of, you know, maximizing return.

They they they're not maximizing return, they're maximizing, you know, the the total, the total, if you want to say the completeness of the of the brand and the brand experience.

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