You’ve probably heard of The North Face. The clothing and outdoor adventure brand, named because the north face of a mountain is generally the coldest, iciest and most challenging route to climb, is pretty ubiquitous amongst travellers and outdoor enthusiasts. We are fans of The North Face gear, as we are equally with Patagonia gear, and we use items from both brands for our own travels.
Interestingly, the founders of both companies were lifelong friends. And yet, the story of the founders of these two brands gives us an inspirational masterclass in modern conservation, using two very different methods.
Let’s start back at the beginning. In 1957 a guy called Yvon Chouinard began to manufacture climbing equipment, for use in mountaineering. These pitons (devices used to attach a rope to a rock face) were of a brand new design and quickly popularised the growing sport of rock climbing. Continuing to research and create new equipment throughout the 1960s, Chouinard also eventually developed new designs of crampons and ice axes. These items helped hiking, trekking, mountaineering and rock climbing see a sudden growth in popularity. In 1964, amongst this new interest in this new type of activity, a young guy called Douglas Tompkins founded a company called ‘The North Face’. This company also began to manufacture rock climbing equipment and looked at other types of climbing supplies. In particular, a new style of tent. Unlike traditional pitched tents, this style he developed didn’t require one central supporting pole but instead utilised lightweight externally threaded poles. And being domed, it could stand up to the strong winds seen on mountainsides. This shape of tent is now found all over the world and may seem obvious, but at the time it was revolutionary. An instant success, it made Tompkins quickly successful but it wasn’t his passion. He later sold out his stake in the company for $50,000 to instead focus on adventure filmmaking.
Taking a newly purchased camera and heading south from California, Tompkins spent six months on a road trip with Chouinard and two others and ended up in Patagonia, the southern region of South America. Here they pioneered new routes on mountains like Mount Fitz Roy and the wilderness had a profound impact on them all. Chouinard could see how the sudden popularity of mountaineering and the sheer number of pitons hammered into the rock could damage these rock faces immeasurably. In many ways, his success had created this problem. Upon his return, Chouinard began to completely change the design for all of his products to be removable. This process, called “clean climbing”, is now the modern standard.
After arriving back home from Patagonia, Tompkins also began looking for a new focus. His wife Susie and her friend named Jane meanwhile had begun designing and selling girl's dresses from their kitchen. The company was dubbed “Plain Jane” after the designer, Jane. Douglas smelled an opportunity and joined the business, using his prior experience to dramatically increase manufacturing and sales capabilities. It later became a major international brand. If “Plain Jane” doesn’t sound too familiar, that might be because it was quickly renamed to “Esprit”.
Not to be outdone, Chouinard then moved on from his rock climbing equipment business and also created a new clothing company in 1970. Possibly in honour of their trip, he called it ‘Patagonia’.
Both companies began to grow at a rapid pace, making their owners very rich. Always with an eye on the protection of the environment, Chouinard decided to dedicate 1% all of sales (or 10% of profits, whatever was higher) to environmental activism, and later completely redesigned his products to use environmentally conscious products (like organic cotton as an example). And, despite his success, Tompkins wasn’t happy either with the effects of his business. Unlike his prior The North Face brand or Patagonia, Esprit was firmly positioned in the fashion space. He began to become increasingly worried about the environmental impact of the fashion industry and its resulting waste. In 1989 sold his share of the company to Susie, who he was now separated from. Leaving the business world behind, he rededicated his life, and his new fortune, to environmental causes.
The following year he created two organisations, the Foundation for Deep Ecology and then The Conservation Land Trust, now known as the Tompkins Foundation. He started off by buying the Reñihué farm in Chile with the intention of saving it from a logging company. This acquisition of land would eventually swell by another 700,000 acres acquired here over the new decade. In 1994 he also acquired another 208,000 acres of land further south, also destined to be lost to logging.
During this spending spree, he also fell in love again. This new love was no other than Kristine McDivitt (later Kristine Tompkins), the CEO of Patagonia. Kris is a force of nature in her own right. She had been with Patagonia and worked with Chouinard since almost the founding of the company, but resigned as the CEO in 1993 in order to devote more time to conservation. The two Tompkins now spent all their time and money on acquiring land for environmental protection.
That isn’t to say that everyone believed them. In Chile, at the time, their actions were viewed with great suspicion. There was lots of negative press and publicity until eventually, the fruits of their labours won over the detractors. That's because what makes this massive ‘land grab’ different from other billionaires is that they never intended the land to be theirs forever. Instead, the land was always earmarked to be donated to the Chilean (and later on, Argentinean) governments, and set aside as strictly protected national parks. For example, that 800,000-acre Reñihué farm project later became Pumalín Park in Palena, now spreading from the Corcovado Gulf to the Andes mountains. The other logging land they had acquired was also donated back to the government. Their only proviso was that the disused neighbouring military land be included with it, to which the Chilean government agreed. This agreement then created the 726,000-acre Corcovado National Park. In Argentina they acquired over 150,000 acres of old cattle ranches and slowly rewilded them, reintroducing native species like tapir, giant anteaters and jaguars.
There are more projects, almost too numerous to mention, where the Tompkins Foundation privately acquired land (using donations from wealthy individuals) and then earmarked it for future protected areas. In addition, they also developed organic farms in all the areas they had acquired land. This program provides a sustainable income for the locals at the same time, by using regenerative agriculture and tourism instead of logging or other destructive practices. This continued throughout the 2000s, with both the Tompkins and Chouinard continuing to dedicate their efforts (and finances) to environmental protection.
Sadly in 2015, whilst Chouinard and Doug Tompkins kayaked together in Chile, strong waves caused their kayaks to capsize. Douglas Tompkins spent a very long time in the 4-degree waters and despite being flown to a nearby hospital, the 72-year-old later died of hypothermia. Continuing their life’s work, Kris Tompkins kept the Foundation going and true to its mission. In 2018 she signed a decree with the Chilean government to add more than 10 million acres under protection, including five new national parks and the expansion of three others. In addition, the Pumalín Park became the Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park, in honour of its founder. It remains the largest donation of land from a private entity to a country in recorded history. This brings the total work of the Tompkins Foundation (so far) to the creation or expansion of 15 national parks, two marine national parks and over 15 million acres of protected land. That’s about 1.5 times the size of Switzerland.
In around 2020, Chouinard found out that he was a billionaire. He was horrified. As he put it, “I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off”. He was determined to do something to rectify it. And so, two years later, after much behind-the-scenes work, he donated the entire company of Patagonia (worth $3 billion) to two trusts devoted to environmental conservation. This now leaves the Earth as the company’s only shareholder.
In a world where other billionaires build super yachts worth hundreds of millions only to rarely sail on them, or buy social media companies to pretend they have friends, it is an amazing thing to see two lifelong friends dedicate themselves to their original focus: the great outdoors. Chouinard did it by staying with the company he had created and watching it become an iconic brand focused on the environment. Doug Tompkins founded two iconic brands but sold both to be more hands-on with the cause. Kris Tompkins is the bridge between the two, helping to build Patagonia into the brand it became and then helping to grow the Tompkins Foundation into a force for good. Today she runs this Foundation as its president, with Chouinard sitting on the board of directors.
For these three, money was never the aim of their passion, but instead a resulting side effect for encouraging others to explore the outdoors. The real reward for them however is to be able to use their good fortune to protect the wilds and mountains of Patagonia, and their North Faces, for future generations.
