How a retail job changed my life: working for Patagonia
Personal anecdote shared by Co-Director Alexis Zahner
A decade ago, I was in hot pursuit of success. A young, fired-up marketing consultant, my career trajectory had been stable and predictable: honours student and university president, coveted graduate job as a well-paid consultant, fast progression and accumulation of status and experience. Underneath, I was deeply unfulfilled, disassociated and lost. But that didn’t matter: I was ‘making it’.
Then, linear progression gave way to chaos: my father passed away unexpectedly, a long-term relationship ended, an old friend died suddenly. I found myself in an existential crisis as life unravelled to reveal the bitter truth. What I’d built wasn’t who I was. At all.
Which gave rise to a question I couldn’t answer.
Who am I?
Amid international travels, I made the cavalier decision to move to Canada and start afresh. In Banff, I took a free yoga class at a local Patagonia store.
A tiny decision that fundamentally changed my life.
Local Banff RCMP flanking, Patagonia Banff Manager Alexis Zahner (left) and Sales Associate team.
As Manager at Patagonia in Banff I led a team of 15. The brand was quickly becoming one of the most coveted in the country, but for reasons much different to its competitors.
Patagonia was never a brand we had to ‘convince’ people to buy. It was simply about solving the customer problem with the best apparel. Often, these customers knew more about the company history and its Founder, Yvon Chouinard than I did. For local rock climbers, the brand held an almost mythical status. ‘Dirt-bags’, or self-branded hard-core climbers, saved their pennies in winter jobs so they could kit themselves in the latest technical Patagonia gear to sleep out and climb at the rock slabs all summer. Wearing the brand meant more than just a new jacket. It was giving back to the earth that afforded you the lifestyle you loved.
Connection to purpose, meaning and impact greater than the sum of our parts – that was what Patagonia meant.
For us as retail workers, this transformed what could feel like a repetitive customer service role into the opportunity to connect and educate customers on the impact of their purchases, creating genuine value in their lives. Knowing we were selling high quality products made ethically and consciously, backed by a warranty that ensured we kept the product in use for years to come, defined the passion with which we worked. We knew that we were playing a small part in creating a better outdoor clothing industry and a better world. In our own way, we were a ripple for change.
At Patagonia I snowboarded four days a week, while working full time and created the flexibility for my staff to do the same. Inspiring and motivating the team wasn’t a challenge. I learned that when you pay people their worth, respect their need to enjoy life, and connect them to a purpose that ensures every contribution they make betters the world, motivation comes naturally.
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard maintained a steadfast vision that set the brand apart, we not only knew it, we felt it.
His genuine reluctance to conform to typical capitalist standards connected him to both customers and employees alike at a deep, profound level. Our jobs became about serving the planet in a way that enhanced our own lives, too, not detracted from them.
To this day, I remain inspired by my time at Patagonia and particularly its founder. The opportunity to lead a team under this brand fundamentally changed my view of business; I see it as a vehicle to drive good in our world.
Learning last week that he has donated his shares to a trust in order to facilitate the environmental mission of Patagonia didn’t surprise me. But his statement that his motivation was to “influence a new form of capitalism” brought tears to my eyes. He remains a visionary for blazing a new path when you’re not happy with the options available to you; it inspires hope for a better future for our world that I realised I hadn’t felt in a while.
As Simon Sinek taught us “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it”, this is how Patagonia has established themselves as a mainstay in a cluttered outdoor apparel market. Their why is as clear and compelling as mud “To save our home planet”. How do they do this? By placing the needs of the planet and people above profit, they’ve pioneered new ways for outdoor apparel to meet the needs of consumers whilst minimising impact to the best of their ability on the environment and enhancing the lives of the humans involved in the process. Their what is obvious; market-leading outdoor and lifestyle apparel that not only looks cool, but functions optimally (or it’s covered by warranty!), and gives consumers an option to give back to earth in the process.
For organisations still struggling to connect the dots between the impact of leadership on employee and business outcomes, Yvon Chouinard’s approach offers a blueprint for social and environmental responsibility.
Do the right thing by your people and the planet, they’ll do the right thing by you, great business outcomes will follow suit – it really is that simple.
