Patagonia founder gives company away, profits go to climate crisis

• Yvonne Chouinard announced Wednesday that he is ditching his multi-billion dollar company, Patagonia.
• Chouinard said that instead of selling it or putting it up to the public, Patagonia would own a fund.
• The fund was created to ensure that Patagonia’s profits are directed toward tackling climate change.

Patagonia’s founder, Yvonne Chouinard, is ditching the company by turning it into a trust aimed at ensuring that its profits are directed toward fighting the climate crisis.

Chouinard, rock climber turned billionaire, announced the move in a statement Wednesday.

“Instead of ‘showing up,’ you could say we ‘go to purpose.’ Instead of extracting value from nature and turning it into wealth for investors, we will use the wealth that Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth,” he wrote.

Chouinard, 83, said he chose to trust rather than sell the company to an owner who might harm Patagonian values ​​or go public and leave the company owned by shareholders first.

Instead, ownership of the outerwear company, valued at about $3 billion, was transferred to the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective.

“It’s been nearly 50 years since we started our responsible business experiment, and we’re just getting started. If we have any hope of a thriving planet—let alone a thriving business—50 years from now, it will take all we do with the resources we can. We have. This is another way we’ve found to do our part,” Chouinard said.

The company said that all profits not reinvested in the company will be distributed to Holdfast Collective to go toward environmental causes, according to an additional statement provided to Insider. The company estimates that this amount will be about $100 million each year.

Founded by Chouinard nearly 50 years ago, Patagonia is well known for its break with traditional business practices and for Commitment to sustainability.

In an interview with New York times Regarding the decision, he hopes that the move “will affect a new form of capitalism that does not end up with a few rich and a group of poor people.”

“We will donate the maximum amount of money to the people who are actively working to save this planet,” he said.

Chouinard and his family donated most of their fortune throughout his life, making them one of them Most charitable families in the United States.

Chouinard also famously said that Patagonia’s decisions that were good for the planet were also It was also good for business.

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