Last year, I shared a story about how my wife and I walked up to the Patagonia store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, only to find the store was closed. It was a few days after Christmas, so it seemed strange that a retail store in the biggest city in America would be shut down.Â
It turns out that every year, from Christmas Day to New Year’s, Patagonia closes its stores for the week. That’s right, the entire company gets the week off–paid, of course. When the company first announced it was shutting down in 2021, it explained the reason was that “our people need a break.”
“At Patagonia, we do our best to not be bound by convention and to look out for people and the planet,” the company shared in a statement. “For the last week of this year, we are shutting down our stores, warehouse and offices in the United States and Canada because our people need a break.”
This year, Patagonia shared it was again shutting its stores in an Instagram post:
“We’re out for the holidays so our employees can spend time with loved ones and chase some much needed fun. We’ll be back on January 2nd, hopefully with sore legs and a few great stories.”
There are a few things I love about that post. First, I think it’s great that this has become a thing that Patagonia does every year.Â
There are plenty of businesses that take time off during the holidays, but most of them are not retail stores. It’s one thing for a dentist’s office or accounting firm to take the week off. No one is getting their teeth cleaned anyway. It’s a little different when locking the doors literally means that you aren’t making money. Except, sometimes doing the right thing is more important. Not only that, but Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, was known for saying that “Every time I do the right thing, I make money.”
Sometimes, doing the things you say you value costs you. In Patagonia’s case, it costs the company in terms of products it might have otherwise sold. On the other hand, the company earns far more goodwill with its employees by giving them the week off.Â
His point was that, when you stick to your values, it might cost you in the short term, but you come out ahead every time. You come out ahead because it can force you to come up with a better product, or you come out ahead because of the trust and affection you earn with customers and employees.
The other thing I love is the last few words of that Instagram post. Patagonia hopes its employees return with “sore legs and a few great stories.” Instead of standing in a retail store handling returns and changes, Patagonia wants its employees to go out and have an adventure.Â
That’s exactly the kind of culture Patagonia works hard to cultivate. In a book published earlier this year, Chouinard and Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s director of philosophy, shared their perspective on how to take care of people:
“Every company, more now than a decade ago, has to win the minds and hearts of its employees who consider it their birthright not simply to bring home a paycheck but to feel satisfied by the work they do,” they wrote. Taking care of your people means giving them a sense of purpose and a mission.
Patagonia has built a culture where the people who work there are the type of people who very much would go off on an adventure over the holidays. It’s not just a typical retail job, it’s a place where people who are passionate about the mission go to work.Â
It’s a valuable lesson for every company, really. I’ve often said that if your brand is the way people feel about your company, your culture is the way your employees feel about it. That might be the single most important thing you can understand about taking care of your people–after all, you don’t get to decide how your people feel, you only get to decide how you treat them. Â That’s the most important lesson of all.Â