Patagonia makes black Friday white

A very smart marketing move but nonetheless a revolutionary strategy, this is what Patagonia’s new environmental program, Common Threads,  represents for CSR and for the market in general.

Since its founding over forty years ago, Patagonia has always been driven by strong social and environmental values. Their niche market was mountain climbing equipment with a concern for “clean climbing” which is reducing the damage to rock faces. They always supported environmental programs but Common Threads taks their commitment to a whole new level.

Common Threads aims to minimize the cost of clothing production through 4 actions: reducing, repairing, reusing and recycling. As a matter of fact customers can repair their Patagonia clothes by returning them to the company but they can also reuse them by donating them to charities or selling them on eBay’s Common Threads site or on the Patagonia website The company also encourages customers to recycle by returning their old clothes to bins so that raw material will be recycled into new Patagonia clothing.

To promote the initiative the company used a symbolic way: on Black Friday, the day of ritual post-Thanksgiving shopping madness, Patagonia ran a full page ad in The New York Times asking customers not to buy one of their popular jackets because it takes too much water and energy to make, explaining that the ultimate saving is to avoid buying something you don’t need.