Why I buy Patagonia

Clothing, for me, is a statement. It’s why I wear Patagonia.

Patagonia is a great company, doing great things. Sure, they’re not perfect, no company is. But they do a helluva lot of good. That and the fact that their clothing just feels good, is why I buy Patagonia and nothing else.

I’m going to get my jeans patched and repaired until they fall off. I’ll stay slim so I can wear my clothing until I die — doing so is good for my health. I’ll give my clothing away, or I’ll save it for my son to wear. I’m guilty of consumerism, we all are. But I’m trying to buy less now, consume less. I don’t need more, I need less. This year my wife and I have vowed to spend less at Christmas.

Friends of mine are starting organic businesses — I’m helping them. I tell everyone I can about what I believe in.

This is a good video about what Patagonia stands for.  Have a watch.

Update:

So I contacted Patagonia. The reason why is that I wanted to suggest they start a site where I could sell my used Patagonia and/or get my Patagonia gear repaired (I don’t know how to sew — not yet, anyway). Patagonia has an eBay page, but eBay sucks.

Here’s their reply:

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Hello,

Thank you for your email.

We have actually recently started programs, or have had programs running, for both of the suggestions you have made.

As for selling and buying used clothes, this is in the beginning stages and is being implemented in our retail stores first.  Select stores, for now, are purchasing used clothes and then selling them again in the store for an extremely discounted price compared to new.  The stores participating in this right now are below, but we expect this program to continue to grow.

Reno, NV
Austin, TX
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Chicago – Lincoln Park, IL
Denver, CO

As for repairs, we have a full repair facility at our distribution center in Reno.  All the work is done in-house and we do over 500 garment repairs per week and can fix nearly anything on our items.  We generally never charge for a customer that wants to repair an item instead of throwing it away or returning it.  In addition to this, we also released an IFIXIT.com page for customers to do repairs on their own items.  If any parts or pieces are needed for the repair we will send those out to the customer from our warehouse here and we can also send directly to local tailors if you want something fixed by a local professional.  All the parts and pieces are free of charge.  If you start a repair and are unable to finish it or have a problem with it later, we won’t consider this a voided warranty, as we want to encourage the customer to fix their own items.  It can be sent in to us at that point and we can do a repair as normal on the item.  I have included a link to our IFIXIT.com page below.

http://www.ifixit.com/patagonia

It is our goal to do more, our responsible economy campaign is not one-and-done.  This is going to be our company platform for the next two years.  Despite wanting fixes and solutions now, it is a process and we wanted to start by asking some questions and making customers think about the way they consume.

I hope this has helped to answer some of these questions and concerns.

All the best!

Mark P.
Patagonia Customer Service

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Now that’s a great company! I was so impressed with their response (thought not surprised — Patagonia has the best customer service), I asked if I could post their response.

Here’s their reply:

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Hello Paul,

Thanks for the email and I like the post. You are welcome to include this reply on your website. I don’t see why this would be an issue, but as this was my own response to your questions and none of this was run past legal or PR, it would be best if you said something to the effect of this being the response of an employee of Patagonia and not necessarily of the company as a whole.

All the best!

Mark P.
Patagonia Customer Service

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So there you go. If you buy Patagonia and you need it repaired, you can send it to them for repairs. Or, they’ll show you how to do it yourself. If you want to sell your Patagonia gear, they make it easy to do so.

This is a company that means what they say and does what they mean.

Buy Patagonia. Then keep it for years, or hand it down. It’s just righteous living, man.