A new three-part podcast series launches this week, looking into arguably one of the most consequential decisions ever made in the winter sports industry. In 2022, the billionaire founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, made a huge splash by announcing that he was voluntarily giving up his company.
His decision—which involved creating a trust to hold his and his family’s shares—was designed to ensure that Patagonia’s future profits would be ploughed back into fighting the climate crisis (chiefly in the form of grants to environmental NGOs and other initiatives). The move was widely hailed as groundbreaking, both in the outdoor and winter sports industries and beyond, with admiring stories in the BBC and the New York Times, among others. And then the media’s focus moved on.
"Why did he do it? And was this really a critical moment in the history of capitalism, as Patagonia believed?"
But for Matt Barr, host of the popular Looking Sideways podcast, Chouinard’s decision left him with a whole load of questions: What did it actually mean? Why did he do it? And was this really a critical moment in the history of capitalism, as Patagonia believed?
For the past two years, Barr has been investigating these and other issues, resulting in a three-part podcast series “The Announcement,” which launched this week, and is available to stream now—on the Looking Sideways site, or (as the saying goes) “wherever you get your podcasts”.
As well as being an engaging host, Barr has skin in the game. He’s not only an outdoor industry stalwart, he runs his own communications agency which itself recently announced a major restructure to become fully employee-owned. This makes him ideally placed to examine the implications of Chouinard’s decision, not just for Patagonia (one of the world’s largest and most powerful outdoor companies) but for the wider winter sports industry and, indeed, the manufacturing sector as a whole.
It’s well worth a listen.
