Yvon Chouinard started by making climbing pitons in a tin shed and selling them out of the back of his car. The pitons were excellent, and they were destroying the rock faces he loved. So he stopped making the most profitable thing he made.

That decision — walk away from the profitable thing when it is doing damage — turns out to be the whole company, repeated for fifty years. It shows up in the switch to organic cotton, in the pledge of one percent of sales, in an advertisement telling people not to buy the jacket.

In September 2022 he did it one last time and at full scale: ownership of Patagonia was restructured so that voting control sits with a purpose trust and the economic interest with a non-profit, directing profits toward climate and conservation work rather than shareholders or an IPO. This is the story of a man who kept refusing the obvious move, and what it cost him each time.