Patagonia

In 2011, Patagonia ran a full page advertisement in the New York Times on Black Friday with a photograph of one of its best selling jackets and three words in bold. Don't Buy This Jacket. The ad explained the environmental cost of producing the garment and asked customers to think twice before purchasing anything they did not truly need. It was the most counterintuitive advertisement in retail history. Sales increased forty percent the following year. Patagonia had discovered something that no marketing textbook teaches. Telling people not to buy your product can make them want it more. Yvon Chouinard founded Patagonia as a climbing equipment company in 1973 and built it around a principle that sounded like terrible business advice. Make the best product, cause the least harm, and use business to inspire solutions to the environmental crisis. He donated one percent of all sales to environmental causes every year, launched a repair program that fixes old Patagonia gear for free to discourage replacement, and created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell used Patagonia clothing.