Patagonia: When the Mission Becomes the Owner

A Climber’s Company

Before Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard was a craftsman who made climbing gear for himself and his friends. In 1973 he founded Patagonia, an outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. Since 1985, Patagonia has given money to grassroots environmental groups, and it now pledges 1% of its sales every year to preserving and restoring the natural environment. In 2002, Chouinard and Craig Mathews, the owner of Blue Ribbon Flies, created 1% for the Planet, a nonprofit that encourages other businesses to make the same pledge. Patagonia says it has contributed more than $240 million to environmental organizations.

From Mission Statement to Purpose

In the years before 2018, the last line of Patagonia’s mission statement promised to “use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” In 2018, the company changed its stated purpose to a much shorter sentence: “We’re in business to save our home planet.” Patagonia’s recent progress report says this purpose is now written into the company’s legal charter.

The company also spells out core values. In 2022, it updated them to describe the kind of company it wants to be over its next 50 years:

• Quality: make the best products, provide the best service, and keep improving everything.
• Integrity: look at its own practices openly and honestly, learn from mistakes, and keep its commitments.
• Environmentalism: protect the home planet.
• Justice: be just, equitable, and antiracist, both inside the company and in its community.
• Not bound by convention: find its own way of doing things.

Those values show up in what Patagonia sells and how it reports. The company backs its products with what it calls its Ironclad Guarantee, sells used clothing through its Worn Wear program, and runs repair programs. In fiscal 2025, it repaired 174,799 products around the world. Its progress report also lists its shortcomings: the company was responsible for 182,646 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in fiscal 2025, and it says about 85% of its products still have no end-of-life solution.

Choosing a Legal Form

Patagonia has also made deliberate choices about its legal form. In January 2012, it became one of the first companies in California to register as a benefit corporation, and it is a certified B Corporation. Later, the company created Patagonia Works, a holding company for Patagonia’s apparel business and related ventures in food and media, with each company organized as a benefit corporation.

A New Kind of Ownership

By 2022, the Chouinard family faced a big question: who should own Patagonia in the future? In a letter dated September 14, 2022, Yvon Chouinard explained the answer. Selling the company was risky, he wrote, because a new owner might not keep its values. He also ruled out going public, arguing that the stock market pushes even well-meaning companies to focus on quick profits instead of the long term. Instead, the family gave the company away.

The new structure has two owners (Exhibit 1). The Patagonia Purpose Trust holds all of the voting stock, which is 2% of the company. It must approve key decisions, such as who serves on the board and changes to the company’s charter, and the Chouinard family guides it. The Holdfast Collective, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, holds all of the nonvoting stock, which is 98% of the company. Each year, profits that are not reinvested in the business are paid to Holdfast as a dividend. Holdfast can use that money for grants and investments, and it can also advocate for causes and political candidates. Chouinard described the result by saying that Earth was now the company’s only shareholder. Patagonia remains a for-profit business, a certified B Corp, and a California benefit corporation. Its pledge to give 1% of sales each year now cannot be changed without the trust’s approval.

Where Things Stand

Ryan Gellert, who previously spent six years as general manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, serves as CEO, and the Chouinard family remains involved. In March 2026, Patagonia announced that Yvon Chouinard’s daughter, Claire Chouinard, was taking over as board chair, succeeding Charles Conn, who had held the role since 2019. Giving continues through several channels. In fiscal 2025, Patagonia gave $14.7 million in grants and in-kind support to 824 nonprofits through its 1% for the Planet commitment. Holdfast, for its part, spent $2 million to protect Georgia wetlands from mining; in June 2025 it helped a conservation group buy and protect about 8,000 acres near the Okefenokee Swamp. In April 2026, Holdfast renewed a $1.55 million, three-year grant to the Rodale Institute’s Regenerate Ventura project, which aims to shift farming in Ventura County toward organic and regenerative methods.

Patagonia also takes public stands. In September 2026, it sued the Trump administration over a presidential proclamation that shrank Bears Ears National Monument, arguing that the reduction was illegal. The company had also sued in 2017, when the monument was reduced during Trump’s first term. Patagonia says it plans to keep operating for the next 50 years and beyond — as a business whose profits, after reinvestment, go to protecting the planet.