Don’t Buy This Jacket… Do Read This Book?
Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away by David Gelles (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Stice
How did an undersized outsider, who liked rock climbing and surfing and hated the conventional working world end up a billionaire? What would a company look like if it was run by someone who might take a month off to climb a mountain and who would be willing to completely change a supply chain for the sake of the planet? And after building a billion-dollar company and keeping all control within the family, why and how would that founder give it away? In Dirtbag Billionaire, David Gelles has to answer all those questions to account for the life of Yvon Chouinard.
Yvon Chouinard is iconic in a few different fields. In his early days, he was an excellent climber and became an excellent maker of climbing gear. He had first ascents and made important innovations with his used anvil. We can count him among the iconic founders of businesses which did not aim for IPOs and remain firmly committed to a bigger purpose—like In-N-Out. In the last thirty years, Chouinard has been at the forefront of the environmentalist movement. That has included product development, direct political engagement and advocacy, and the use of his personal resources. Chouinard and his company exist in multiple universes. Finance bros wear Patagonia vests and Patagonia protects forests from the clutches of finance bros.
It seems, then, that Chouinard has something to teach us about life and about business. Dirtbag Billionaire includes both, with an emphasis on the business end. If you have been reading about Chouinard’s life and philosophy over the last few years by piecing together Chouinard’s own writing, there is not much new material here. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman and the various Patagonia publications already tell the story pretty well. However, most people have likely not been following along via occasional publications (not always easy to find) and this book brings the narrative together in one place. It also includes more information on the new ownership structure at Patagonia. A significant advantage of this book is that Chouinard is not a co-author, so Gelles includes more criticism of Chouinard.
A tension running throughout the book and, it seems, through Patagonia is what we should make of Yvon Chouinard himself. The book stops short of hagiography, but it is certainly celebratory in many places. According to many sources, a number of Patagonia employees—like quite a few outsiders—have developed a hero complex around Chouinard. And why not? Chouinard is an outsider who loves the outdoors, did things his way, has a passion for design, and managed to become a billionaire without much liking business. Patagonia may be a model for a more humane approach to capitalism. Chouinard and Patagonia have certainly been innovative within capitalism, from B Corps to the Higg Index, to 1% for the Planet, and more.
But as inspiring as Yvon Chouinard is, he is no saint. Chouinard has said as much himself in many places, acknowledging that Patagonia is still a business that needs to make money. He cares about the environment, but he has made decisions to protect the bottom line over the years, too. He was not too holy to work with Wal-Mart or the U.S. military. Chouinard’s management style is unconventional and has had mixed success. He has struggled to keep CEOs for very long at his very unique company. Even at the lower levels, Patagonia employs a lot of idealists, but not everyone idolizes the man at the top. Gelles will highlight a point of contention or criticism, but he usually ties off the thread by saying that even Chouinard’s critics respect his record and his commitment to doing things his way. Readers are reassured that Chouinard is a “dirtbag billionaire” in the climbing sense of “dirtbag,” not the kind of billionaire you might consider the usual kind of dirtbag.
Chouinard’s obsession with quality is on the list of things about him that consistently demand respect. Gelles shares that “Chouinard even taught classes about quality to Patagonia employees. He would bring in a bag of Peet’s coffee beans, set it down on a table, and ask his students: ‘Is that a quality coffee bean?’” (128). After some confusion, conversation would start. Chouinard would emphasize that “quality is objective.” When others objected, he insisted: “It’s about consistency. It’s about a product fulfilling its function” (128). Quality is at the heart of the company. Part of the story of Patagonia is about environmentalism and adventure, but part of the story of Patagonia is an obsession with stitching and consistency and high-quality materials. Factory tours are about labor conditions and quality control. Environmental adjustments that lead to inferior products are not pursued. Design is never an afterthought. The goal is always excellence.
In certain respects, Chouinard is like other wealthy business owners. He is relentless in his vision for excellence. He is innovative. He is passionate and he fights to create and preserve profit, even if he limits it. He will prioritize the business and the big picture over the employees. On the other hand, Chouinard is unlike most other businessmen with those same traits. He does not aspire to die a billionaire—and he won’t, because of the purpose trust established by Chouinard and his family. His vision is for Patagonia to continue indefinitely, at least for another fifty years, and to serve the larger purpose he established for it, without continuously enriching his family. Here, too, Chouinard shows himself to be an innovator. Gelles quotes Jim Collins on the “ownership overhaul” as saying, “Let’s call it a big and wonderful experiment” (259).
Even people who do not enjoy climbing or skiing or kayaking can read this book for its business insights. In fact, there is more here for them than there is for those who want more details on climbing and first ascents. Chouinard himself has been working through the business lessons from his company and bridging the gap between ideals and actualities in print, too. Two helpful books in that arena are The Responsible Company (2012) and The Responsible Economy: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First Forty Years (2013). But Gelles brings all the pieces together in a narrative without getting bringing in all the details and all the conversations. He provides an overarching view that makes it easier to distill the business story. Those more interested in Chouinard’s adventures should read Let My People Go Surfing (reissued in 2016), Some Lessons (2019), and Climbing Fitz Roy 1968 (2013).
Yvon Chouinard’s life and business career did not follow a pre-determined path. In some ways, the business growth resembled rock climbing. It moved from one foothold to another, it had a certain flow, but it was not a straight line or entirely predictable. This book, too, seems to wander a bit in its organization and the chapters might be better off shorter and more thematic. Gelles could lean closer to the wall. However, for those who know a little bit about Chouinard and Patagonia, but want to know more, this is a very strong book. It brings together elements of biography and business and shows the ways in which Chouinard is human, and sometimes heroic. Gelles manages to explain what motivates Chouinard and what motivated the decision to give Patagonia away without offering an idealistic narrative that fails to account for Chouinard’s business genius. This is good reading for the many aspiring entrepreneurs among us.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history and assistant director of the honors program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. When she can, she reads and writes about World War I and she is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023).
