​Yvon Chouinard Gives Up Ownership of Patagonia To Fight Climate Change

Yvon Chouinard has given up his ownership of Patagonia. | Campbell Brewer/Patagonia photo.

Yvon Chouinard, the influential founder of Patagonia and longtime climate activist, announced today that he has given up ownership of the company after nearly 50 years, in a further effort to use the profits to help fight the devastating effects of climate change. Effective immediately, the Chouinard family has transferred all ownership to two new entities: Patagonia Purpose Trust and the Holdfast Collective. Instead of privately selling the $3 billion company or going public, every dollar made that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.

According to a press release from Patagonia:

The Patagonia Purpose Trust now owns all the voting stock of the company (two percent of the total stock) and exists to create a more permanent legal structure to enshrine Patagonia’s purpose and values. It will help ensure that there is never deviation from the intent of the founder and to facilitate what the company continues to do best: demonstrate as a for-profit business that capitalism can work for the planet.

The Holdfast Collective owns all the nonvoting stock (98 percent of the total stock), and it will use every dollar received from Patagonia to protect nature and biodiversity, support thriving communities and fight the environmental crisis. Each year, profits that are not reinvested back into the business will be distributed by Patagonia as a dividend to the Holdfast Collective to help fight the climate crisis. The company projects that it will pay out an annual dividend of roughly $100 million, depending on the health of the business.

Yvon Chouinard says:

It’s been a half-century since we began our experiment in responsible business. If we have any hope of a thriving planet 50 years from now, it demands all of us doing all we can with the resources we have. As the business leader I never wanted to be, I am doing my part. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source. We’re making Earth our only shareholder. I am dead serious about saving this planet

About The Author

Follow

stash member Max Ritter

I manage digital content here at TGR, run our gear testing program, and am stoked to be living the dream in the Tetons.