Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

In Ireland, women used to knit thick wool sweaters with a family-specific pattern for their husbands who were seaman. On an industrial scale, Patagonia tries to replicate the hand knitter’s dedication to quality. The specific quality of its type of stitching is essential to the Patagonia brand, just as the pattern was essential to the family.

Patagonia’s principles of production are listed in the subsections that follow.

It’s imperative to maintain a sense of urgency in business because being first to market often trumps other qualities of a product, such as price and quality. It’s important to adopt an entrepreneurial rather than a conservative scientific approach to product because what the former lacks in certainty it makes up for in primacy. Suppliers often won’t have the same sense of urgency as the company itself, so it’s important to push back against suppliers’ claims that something can’t be done—these claims are in fact indications that suppliers are dragging their feet and not being creative problem solvers.

It’s crucial to successful production that the designer and producer meet before production is started and that they maintain a back-and-forth relationship through production. While design itself only incurs around 10% of a product’s cost, 90% of its cost is irrevocably committed during this stage.