My Role: Product Design Consultant
Project: Facilitate and execute a design sprint with senior leadership in order to surface possible adjacent product lines congruent with Patagonia's current line of products and corporate values. This sprint was conducted at the same time Yvon Chouinard (Founder and former CEO) was transitioning out of his role and current CEO Rose Mercario began.
Our Design Sprint Process
UnderstandDevelop a common understanding of the working context including the problem, the business, the customer, the value proposition, and how success will be determined. .
DivergeGenerate insights and potential solutions for Patagonia's problem. Explore as many ways of solving, regardless of how realistic, feasible, or viable they may or may not be.
ConvergeTake all of the possibilities exposed during the understand and diverge phases, eliminate the wild and currently unfeasible ideas and hone in on the ideas we feel the best about.
Understanding Patagonia
Prior to landing in Ventura, California where Patagonia's headquartered, my team and I wanted to put ourselves in the mindset of the founder, Yvon Chouinard. We all grabbed a copy of Mr. Chouinards great book, Let My People Go Surfing and gained a great respect for the man behind the vision and the birth of thier core values of Integrity, Environmentalism and not being bound by Convention, rather developing innovative ways of doing things
We arived and immediately immersed ourselves in their coorporate culture and manufacturing ethics. We instantly understood their passion behind being coorporately responsible manufacturers of the highest quality proucts of outerwear made for the extreme outdoors person and their utmost regard for the environment. The clause, "cause no unecessary harm" resonates in all of their products from conception to creation. We also learned about "Dirtbags" keep that in mind, it comes into play very soon.
Diverging
Coming up with several ideas is where my team and I excel. We left no stones unturned and no mount insurmounted when whiteboarding with the executives of Patagonia, and their engagement did not fall short of ours. The Chief Operating Officer, Chipper Bro, (yes thats his name and he's also Ultimate Frisbey world champion!) was very enthusiastic and sincerely engaged. At times he would throw subtle realities but allowed us to infinitely diverge.
Our innovative solutions ranged from food products to tech driven devices of engagement. The idea of embellishing on their already almost perfect corporate strategy gave fruit to many ideas to transpire and envoke Patagonia's core values across various industries. We weighted our solutions heavily on the persona of the ideal dirtbag, the extreme outdoors person who sincerely relies on their apparel and gear to work because their lives depend on it. The high quality products that Patagonia produces. See some of our ideas below.
Converging and Results
After presenting several solutions we converged and sincerely took into the consideration the dirtbag persona, the ideal candidate that purchases patagonia products. There were two contenders that outshined the rest as most ideal solutions for an ideal adjacent product. The category of food and the industrial workforce made for a seamless integration in their already existing logistical infrastructure.
Our convergence lead us to collaboratively agree upon clothing for the industrial workforce as the optimal adjacent product. Using our dirtbag persona as a guiding light we supported the industrial workforce option as they obtain sincerely similar characteristics. Their loyalty to well made products that allow them to perform well and outlasting durability creates a bond between consumer and product that is almost impossible to surpass. Patagonia's executives took well to our consultation but did not (at that moment) dictate which avenue they were going to choose. A few months passed since our consultation and periodicals began to surface.
Click Salmon image to read Fortune article
Click jacket to read article that surfaced a few months after our consultation.
Patagonia Launches Patagonia Workwear August 2017!
Click workwear to visit Patagonia's newest line of products.