At the centre stage of Patagonia Company stands its most valuable pillar and founder, Yvon Chouinard. Yvon saves is a man believed to be saving the world, one fleece jacket at a go. Being a climber, surfer, am entrepreneur, an environmentalists and a known philanthropist, he certainly stands out as one of the few business men who attained success based on his own terms of doing business. Based on his tender age experience as a climber, Yvon realized that he was capable of making more environmentally safe, cheap and effective climbing equipment than what was available in the market. Patagonia, the company that he formed makes exceptional gear as a market leader in the same with worldwide sales soaring above 240 million US dollars annually! Chouinard leadership at Patagonia has basically been a fearless one which has enabled the company to uphold innovation in its corporate practice as well as embracing new changes like when it switched to the use of organically grown cotton as well as other forms of recycled materials alone in its production process. His fearless qualities have also ensured that the company can manage to give away a small percentage of its annual gross sales to the other small scale works that are not profit oriented and maintain the profitability of the company. In “Let my people go surfing”, Yvon shows how by keeping the determined spirit of an explorer, one can blend work, play and social duty and remain successful. Through his easy leadership, Yvon has managed to curve a reputation of unsurpassed quality, long term environmental strategies and a maverick innovation plan in the company. Even the face of the challenging business world, Yvon is still into surfing and generally adventure but surprisingly maintains record success in his business.

One of Yvon’s philosophies is that “You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means” (Chouinard, 2005). Yvon says that though he tried to look at herself just like a climber, surfer and blacksmith, he had to accept that he was also a businessman and was going to remain one for a long time probably. He however decided that if he was to stay in business, he was going to operate not by the normal rules of business but by his own terms, be serious but make his work enjoyable on a daily basis. He also realized that the terms under which he was going to operate were suppose to allow him and his employees climb one stair of their progress one at a time, allow enough freedom for their employees to dress the way they want, even bare foot if it would make them happy! And create some spare time for him to surf the waves, sky the powder or take care of issues at home. In other words he cultivated a culture in Patagonia where there was distinction between the family, the work someone did and play. Even though the company profits grew from 20 million dollars to 100 million dollars between the 1980s and 1990, he and his wife Melinda kept all the money in the business (Chouinard, 2005). The growth in the company just excited everybody and they never failed to do what they could to maintain that level of growth. Upward vertical mobility was very real since even new employees in lower paying jobs like in the warehouse or retail stores had the opportunity and indeed rose to better paying positions in the company. Yvon established a fast-growing organization which in turn helped with outsourcing of the skilled labor that they needed. Despite the growth, Patagonia staff members still managed to keep their own cultural practices. People surfed at lunch hour; they played volleyball on the sand behind the building.

When it came to the realization of Yvon, that Patago