To Do Good, You Actually Have To

Doing Risk Sports Had Taught Me Another Important Lesson: Never Exceed Your Limits. You Push The Envelope And You Live For Those Moments When You’re Right On The Edge, But You Don’t Go Over. You Have To Be True To Yourself; You Have To Know Your Strengths And Limitations And Live Within Your Means. The Same Is True For A Business. The Sooner A Company Tries To Be What It Is Not, The Sooner It Tries To ‘have It All,’ The Sooner It Will Die.

The Word Adventure Has Gotten Overused. For Me, When Everything Goes Wrong - That's When Adventure Starts

I've Always Thought Of Myself As An 80 Percenter. I Like To Throw Myself Passionately Into A Sport Or Activity Until I Reach About An 80 Percent Proficiency Level. To Go Beyond That Requires An Obsession That Doesn't Appeal To Me. Once I Reach 80 Percent Level I Like To Go Off And Do Something Totally Different; That Probably Explains The Diversity Of The Patagonia Product Like - And Why Our Versatile, Multifaceted Clothes Are The Most Successful.

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.

We Grow By Letting The Customer Tell Us. So When The Customer Tells Us That They're Frustrated, That They Just Got Their Catalogue And We're Already Out Of A Product They Wanted, Then It Tells Me That We're Not Making Enough. We Let The Customer Tell Us Instead Of Creating An Artificial Demand For Our Products. Any Time You're Making Products That People Don't Need, You're At The Mercy Of The Economy, You're At The Mercy Of Whatever Is Going On. So We Tried To Avoid That Situation.