Competitive Advantage Of Patagonia

I. Background and Company Analysis
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Patagonia, founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1971, is an outdoor apparel company that has successfully integrated green elements into almost every business activity, from R&D to human resources management, to reduce harm to the environment. These elements firmly align with the corporate objectives of enhancing product and service quality, reducing environmental impacts and having constant innovation. These practices not only enable Patagonia to create values to its customers, but also help the company differentiate itself as innovative leader in the green segment of the industry.

A. Orsato’s Framework - Competitive Environmental Strategies
Patagonia should be considered

It inspired other giants in the apparel industry, namely Nike and Gap, to make changes in terms of material usage. It also shared information and advised firms on the organic cotton business. More and more companies turned out to follow Patagonia’s business practices and imitated some of its products. Sharing resources with other firms may impose a threat of imitation and thus weaken Patagonia’s competitive advantage. Therefore, Patagonia should consider how to maintain its competitiveness in the green

Alternatives and Evaluation
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A. Selection criteria
The triple bottom lines may serve as the foundation for green business, allowing firms like Patagonia to evaluate its business strategies in a more comprehensive manner, to take more stakeholders into account and can potentially contribute its sustainability. It also align with Patagonia’s business objectives including the followings:

TBL Objectives of Patagonia
Planet Reduce environmental harm
Profits Achieve 10% sales growth
People Educate the public

B. Alternatives
1. Product Recycle Initiative with refined scope
One of the possible solutions to the above issues is to continue with the Product Lifecycle Initiative, but with a refined scope. As proposed, Patagonia might repair any garments regardless of their brands. Such services may benefit its competitors at the expense of Patagonia’s profits as it will incur extra cost to boost repairing capacity. Therefore, Patagonia may consider to provide such services to other brands only when they agree to pay a price for it. Also, outsourcing the repair services to reliable and high quality provider can keep their repair cost at a low level. These measures probably allow Patagonia to reduce costs and continue to impact other players in the apparel industry to go