Don’t Buy This Jacket

Sustainable entrepreneurs establish startups to provide products or services with substantially reduced social and environmental impacts which provide value. Patagonia is an example of a sustainable business, they aim to not only provide excellent products but provide them sustainably.

Patagonia’s founder “Yvon Chouinard”

I remember first hearing about Patagonia during my marketing class last semester. In the class, we were discussing different advertising strategies, and one of the most bizarre advertisement strategies was used by Patagonia in preparation for Black Friday. Their ad was simple, a picture of their fleece jacket, with the headline “DON’T BUY THIS JACKET” in large bold words. It worked brilliantly because of the initial confusion, and then the message truly hits. Patagonia as a brand wants to encourage customers to consider the environmental costs of everything that is made. It seemed absurd, how could they push an agenda against consumerism, wouldn’t that significantly hurt their bottom line? In fact, they saw significant increases in global sales, and is a success story for marketers everywhere, about how to create an effective marketing message that coordinates with their brand image.

Patagonia is a retailer of outdoor clothing goods, and as part of its mission to be sustainable has given part of its profits toward environmental causes, and adjusted its manufacturing to be more eco-friendly. Unlike some other companies in the clothing industry, Patagonia cares deeply about the impact that it has, and has taken many initiatives to care for the environment, despite its impact on their costs. Through this Patagonia has created a product that people genuinely enjoy supporting, and has gained a lot of goodwill through this strategy. I enjoy purchasing jackets from Patagonia, because at the end of the day it feels great to support a company that cares so deeply about taking care of the world.

Man wearing a Patagonia Jacket

Patagonia has demonstrated that sustainability can be a form of competitive advantage and an excellent marketing tool. In fact, there is a term to describe this action, called “shared value”, in essence, it’s addressing societal needs and challenges through a business model.

Creating shared value as a goal can drive innovation as well as growth within an industry. Patagonia’s business demonstrates both shared value and sustainability, and we can show this by breaking it down further to the 3 Ps, People, Planet, and Profit.

These three form the triple bottom line and are a good measure of if an organization is sustainable or not. The first P, People is demonstrated by Patagonia’s care for their employees as well as their community. The second P, Planet is shown by their more eco-friendly manufacturing as well as donating part of their profit towards environmental causes. The final P, Profit is earned by selling high-quality and durable outerwear.

~ LAU, Nathan