Patagonia Inc. is a supplier of outdoor clothing and accessories, its grew from a small company making climbing accessories and sustainability is a core value.
It is worth reviewing Patagonia’s mission statement as this is the brand’s DNA –
“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”
Patagonia’s brand identity is irreversibly linked with sustainability and this is continually promoted by the brand. Patagonia likes to differentiate itself by being an activist brand and would be perceived as a caregiver brand. It does get involved with environmental campaigns and following the ‘One Percent for the Planet’ campaign, gives 1% of its total revenue to grassroots environmental organisations in multiple countries.
Because Patagonia is focused on sustainability and responsibility it must be transparent in all aspects of how the brand operates and for it to detail where it does harm. Patagonia’s website is a good example of that as it shows a map of the brand’s supply chain businesses –
Here we can see that the brand uses Fair Trade suppliers and organic ingredients, but also details its support for minimum / fair wages in the supply chain business and does not hide the fact that there is an environmental impact when using nylon and polyester polymers to make shell garments, also that the DWR waterproofing layer is environmentally toxic.
Patagonia is also aware that it needs to apply its values in how it employs staff and you can see that in how it uses values based recruiting rather than traditional recruitment and that it offers child care facilities.
Black Friday which is the day after Thanksgiving in the US is a very busy shopping day and in 2011 Patagonia did something very different. It advertised a picture of a jacket with the tag line ‘don’t buy this jacket’, instead of selling a product at a peak time this was a brand advertising that it is better to reduce , repair, reuse and recycle. This was revolutionary for a big retail brand to say we are not going for more sales but we are going to market a sustainability message as this reflects our values.
In a changing world customers are becoming more aware of their environmental footprint and the impact their purchasing choices has, at each of the touch points the customer is aware of the fact that Patagonia is a sustainable business and that the product that you buy will have the least environmental impact possible.
But then after purchasing a Patagonia product you then enter a long-term relationship with the brand as on their website they give detailed information on how to repair their products and give you the ability to give the product away for reuse or recycling when you have finished with it.
It is these values and the service that the brand delivers makes it resonate with consumers and that differentiates it in congested marketplace. The customers trust Patagonia and admire its values, what is helpful is that the brands principles chime with the customer’s lifestyle. What is helping the brand is the sustainability message not to buy what you don’t need and that quality lasts is now changing customer behaviours in a more cost and impact aware society.
However, when you are a brand that is very focussed on not doing harm and being sustainable and doing the best that you can to reduce your environmental impact, there is potentially an increased risk of brand damage when a problem is identified in your supply chains.
In 2012 it was identified that some of the down feathers used in some of the clothing (this is a natural insulator and easy to recycle) came from being live plucked from the birds that were being farmed for the Foie-Gras industry. This was a sensitive subject as Foie-Gras is controversial and Patagonia quickly denied that feathers were live plucked but did admit that feathers had come from Foie-Gras production which was a problem for the brand. It took time for Patagonia to make the changes to the supply chain so that all feathers used in its clothing are traceable. This was not a simple change and would have taken a lot of time and investment.
PETA had shown problems in the farms that supplied wool to Patagonia and they responded quickly by switching wool procurement to another country, however PETA then identified problems there and all Patagonia could do is to issue guidance on treatment of animals and land use.
This shows that if you are a brand differentiating yourself by being sustainable and responsible, then you are open to more scrutiny and you must react quickly to identified problems and propose solutions.
However, what is not a problem now can be identified as a problem in the future and there is now the issue of micro fibres that are detached from our synthetic clothing when we wash them and end up in the marine environment, here they are eaten by fish and other marine animals and then can end up in our food.
This is a difficult problem for Patagonia as a lot of their outdoor clothing is technical (synthetic) as these work better than traditional materials. Patagonia commissioned a study by the University of California Santa Barbara and has advised their customers to wash the technical clothing less often and there is micro fibre wash reduction information on the website. Patagonia has partnered with Guppy Friend to sell their micro fibre retention wash bags at cost in their stores and online.
This is an ongoing problem with workaround solutions and what I would like to see is that Patagonia collaborates and shares information with the other clothing brands so more resources can be brought together to deal with this problem. However, with any new material there can always be future environmental risk.
What worries me is that because this brand has values that conflict with the new US administration the fact that the CEO makes a statement that she and the business will actively resist the new administration is unwise. Patagonia’s home market is polarised politically and this can impact how the brand is viewed by a significant percentage of their customers and this illustrates the risks when a brand is overtly political. Where it has been effective in the past is when it has lobbied other corporations to do more in terms of sustainability.
References –
Patagonia Inc (http://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/home/)
CBS Bay area 5 (http://www.cbsnews.com/)
Guppy Friend (http://guppyfriend.com/)
NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/)
Bucko 