Swenson Mag Vol.01 - English by Kevin Le Goff

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Team

Creative Director Kevin Le Goff Editor-in-Chief Elisa Routa Content Director Charles Fourault

Graphic Design

Jérémie Barlog - BureauW / Maison 172

Contact

Main contact / contact@swenson-mag.com Submissions / content@swenson-mag.com Advertising / advertising@swenson-mag.com Press & Partnerships / partners@swenson-mag.com

Websites

Swenson Global / www.swenson.global Swenson Magazine / www.swenson-mag.com

Stockists

Would your shop like to carry Swenson? stockist@swenson-mag.com

Writers

Olivier Hamelin, Matthieu Tordeur, Jon Westenberg, Fabrice Le Mao, Elisa Routa

Photographers

About Swenson

Featured

Swenson Magazine is conceived and designed in France, printed in Brittany by Cloître Imprimeur

Chloe Aftel, Gunung Bromo, Tom Hawkins, Jeff Johnson, Patagonia Archives, Roger Cotton, Gordon Wiltsie, Tom Frost, Vincent Colliard, Michael Berger, Ming Nomchong, Thomas Walk, Nevin Pontious, Max Buchanan, David Burleson, Richie Hopson, Jorge Leal, Hugo Silva, Brian Bielmann, Matthieu Tordeur, Nicolas Auber, Julien Roubinet, Matt Georges, Larry Niehues Leila Janah, Dare Jennings, Jason Fried, Rick Ridgeway, Léa Brassy, Mihela Hladin, Patrick Long, Howie Idelson, Lauren L. Hill, Ryan Kingman, Heather Larsen, Maya Gabeira, Andrew Cotton, Matthieu Tordeur, Nicolas Auber, Jay Nelson, Matt Georges, Julien Roubinet, Edward Thompson, Larry Niehues, Charlotte Hand

Translator and Proof Reader Emma Price (Lost in Translation) Florian Cochard

Special Thanks to

Jérémie Barlog, Vassili Verrecchia, Johanne Corre, Florence Lesouef, Anna Chan, Gordon Wiltsie and all the people who supported and believed in Swenson since the beginning

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Swenson is an outdoor entrepreneurial community for innovators, creators, and thought leaders who believe that business and passion are tools that should be used to have a positive impact on the world. Founded in 2015 by a group of friends, Swenson swiftly evolved into a company with its very own global community

Cover photograph by Matt Georges Thomas Delfino in a pillow line, somewhere in Italy Back cover quote by Heather Larsen Photo p 3: Courtesy of Deus Ex Machina Photo p 8: Matt Georges Photo p 34: Vincent Colliard

Disclaimer

Reproduction of this publication is strictly forbidden without written permission from the publisher (including all logos, titles and graphic elements). The views expressed in Swenson Magazine are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by Swenson and its staff. Swenson Magazine has been careful to contact all copyrights holders of the images used. If you claim ownership of any of the images presented here and have not been properly identified, please contact Swenson and we will be happy to make a formal acknowledgment in a future issue

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Vol. 01 Edito.

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December, 10th 2016. With a final deadline that was already fixed for yesterday, can we still claim to be on time? Being late with our first edition, well, it kinda sucks. Ten years ago, I was taking my very first steps. At the time, I’d decided to dump my promising career in radio and become an independent journalist specializing in surf press. The reason being a mix between me wanting my freedom, this burning passion I felt inside and, let’s be honest, an obvious inability to do anything else. I have spent the past 10 years of my life asking questions to a bunch of hard headed purist longboarders and trying to decipher the brains of tortured and insolent artists. I have, without any chronology, interviewed & written about pro surfers, lived on a 9-meter long sailboat, harassed editors of the four corners of the world for a bit of page, described with meticulousness and poetry the work of shapers and craftsmen, had a serious relationship with Skype, have blackened dozens of cellulosic plant fibers with large pools of ink, had one-way discussions with photographers, spent countless evenings staring my blank Word document in the eye, taken hundreds of trips to Australia, road trips across Costa Rica or surf trips in Sri Lanka, all by proxy, via photo files heavier than your annoying uncle on Christmas Eve. I’ve had memorable romantic tete-a-tetes with my dictaphone, I’ve waited all day long in crowded waiting rooms for that one unanswered email, I’ve caught glimpses of some of the most beautiful waves in the world, read all about the courage & the struggle that many associations have just to keep their head above the water, have listened to thousands of stories, testimonies, feelings and memories and then tried to put all that on paper. I have, thanks to my intolerable tenacity and monomania, which sometimes paralyzes me, managed to achieve my dream: that of becoming a writer. So there you go for the presentations. Millions of words later, here we are.

So I was worlds away from thinking about things like fundraising, valuations, Series A, turnovers, investments, bootstrappings, lean startup, or other barbaric acronyms. But we have, without knowing it, you and I, a virus in common, this slightly manic set idea for entrepreneurship. Swenson is for the passionate ones, it’s for an entier community of inventive, outward-looking creators who’s only psychosis is to realize their dreams. Swenson gives the floor to those who are usually considered madmen, although sometimes they are called heroes, impostors or geniuses. Swenson writes about all those who are driven by instinct, guided by passion, creativity and the desire to undertake. Inspired by the conviction of Lauren L. Hill, the community gathered around Patrick Long, the transparent advise given by Rick Ridgeway, the determination of Maya Gabeira, the authenticity of Charlotte Hand, the inventiveness of Jay Nelson and the revolutionary perception of Jason Fried, Swenson brings you a modern vision of entrepreneurship. With a bit of luck, when we’ll have covered a few more pages with ink, listened to thousands more dreams of creators and seen the projects of entrepreneurs, surfers, craftsmen, photographers, designers, illustrators, skateboarders, travelers, adventurers, explorers, environmentalists, mountaineers, activists, athletes, and enthusiasts of all kinds come to life, Swenson will by then have become, almost by accident, like Dare Jennings’ Deus Ex Machina, a bold cross- functional project that people will still be talking about in 10 years time. But before that happens, we’ll just try to be a little less late in finishing this first edition. Since we’re capable of leaving a trace in this world, let us at least make it a beautiful one.

Elisa Routa Editor in Chief

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Volume 01

Samasource with Leila Janah

No Dickheads Policy with Dare Jennings

Patagonia with Rick Ridgeway

Patagonia with Léa Brassy

Basecamp with Jason Fried

Surfing & Ecofeminism with The Sea Kin

Luftgekühlt with Patrick Long

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A self-made man with Ryan Kingman

Why You Should Build A Small Business — Not A Start-up

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Table of contents

100

Fear, Failures and Fall with Heather Larsen

Fear, Failures and Fall with Maya Gabeira and Andrew Cotton

118

128

Ice-Cream Headaches by Julien Roubinet and Ed Thompson

144

Wooden Cocoons by Jay Nelson

Make America America again by Larry Niehues

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108

Microfinance with Matthieu Tordeur

134

Snowboarding as an excuse with Matt Georges

152

Wolf Pack Leather x Swenson

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01/

THE FRAME / swenson_vol1_exe_Final_EN.indd 10

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Passionate people

«All it takes is one trip» with Leila Janah Dare Jennings, «No Dickheads Policy»

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All it takes is one trip with Leila Janah

I suppose that the struggle for every entrepreneur is to realize that the important thing is not in the daily success, but in the overall work accomplished. Sometimes a little is all it takes. A gesture, a few words, a trip, an encounter. And when you realize that, all of a sudden you can feel your body vibrating under the dictates of a lucidity that grips you around your throat. But lucidity often gives way to frustration. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I had felt at the end of this journey: a suffocating melange of shame, helplessness and waste, mixed with awe and total respect ; one does not emerge unscathed from a road trip in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa. Take my word for it. I remember all the questions that I started asking myself: how can you help without positioning yourself as a dominant? How can we fight poverty without undermining the integrity of those who have nothing, without depriving them of their human rights, choose their own destiny? How can we give without being paternalistic, without interfering? How do you respark desire and enthusiasm? How do you deal with the past? The problem of poverty seemed insoluble to me. I had no solutions. I was ashamed. So I chose silence.

Interview and words : Olivier Hamelin Photos : Chloe Aftel

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The reason that all this had suddenly come flooding management projects that enrich and organize the back to me years later is that Swenson Magazine large databases of international companies such as had just asked me to look further into the matter by Google, Tripadvisor or eBay, via an economic model interviewing Leila Janah and discuss her project to that helps to get people out of poverty. The idea is fight poverty. A total slap in the face. By studying the original and of a rather disconcerting efficiency. It is subject once again, I must admit that I a source of hope as well as a source of wasn’t at all expecting to find anything I think the best admiration and curiosity. Curiosity... like this. Leila Janah, a thirty-four-yearBehind every idea, I told myself before way to address preparing the interview, there is a story, old American visionary, is one of those poverty is to do that of a man or a woman. Yes, you people who are full of resolutions, who have the genius and strength to business in poor have to start by being curious and by carry out projects that nobody else countries but in telling a story. Their story. For if one believes in. In recent years, Leila has wants to understand the genesis of an ethical way. Leila Janah’s brilliant idea, if one wants become well respected in the world of entrepreneurship thanks to a project to understand where the strength that she has engaged in, body and soul. and courage of this American woman A project called Samasource. stemmed from, one must first of all take a look at her A non-profit organization, Samasource’s mission is to life, her own story. An atypical story, of course, but one reduce poverty in the world by providing sustainable which is especially open to the world and particularly and worthy jobs via the Internet for people living imbued with tolerance and generosity. in poverty. In fact, Samasource is one of the first « I am an American woman who comes organizations to engage in « Impact Sourcing ». It from a first generation of migrants, » Leila begins uses an internet-based model of operation called to tell me when I discuss her roots and younger microwork, which consists of decomposing large years with her by e-mail. « The mother of my digital projects into several smaller projects; projects mother, who was Belgian, hitch-hited around the that require skills that can easily be assimilated world after World War II before finally settling in by workers. If we had to summarize the subject, Calcutta, where she opened a ceramic workshop you could say that Samasource provides practical with her husband. She taught me the importance

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The Frame of working hard to get what you want. My father, for his part, had had a Jesuit education all his life. He came from a long line of Calcutta Christians in southern India and had inherited a deep sense of social justice and compassion. So he made sure that I understood the fact that every human being had worth and a dignity of their own. And then, in spite of the fact that we were terribly poor - I had to work from the age of thirteen - we were taught that money was not a goal in itself. » So with her head firmly screwed onto her shoulders and her eyes wide open to the world, Leila began to build an identity for herself. Strong from this solid and conscientious background, at seventeen, eager for adventure, she decided to go on a trip to Ghana that was about to change her life forever. An electric shock, no doubt, you can still hear it resonating in her words; the crucial turning point that shaped all of her future enterprises. « I had no idea what I was getting myself into » she tells me when I ask her about her first trip to the African continent. « I think in the beginning, I went there to escape and live an adventure. I had the vague sensation that I would eventually be led to help people in need, as a volunteer English teacher. But when I arrived in Ghana, I was amazed by the level of my students. They could all read and write in very good English. It made me realize that we had really created a myth about poverty, a myth that suggests that poor people are incapable of helping themselves. Africa holds a rather mysterious place in our collective imagination - it frustrates me that we still associate so many stereotypes with it. It was so frustrating to see so many talented souls going to waste. I remember being amazed by the talent of some of them and I also remember feeling like I had a duty to help these people get out of poverty. » Following this first trip, young Leila continued to go back and forth to the African continent, trying to think of possible solutions to fight against poverty. After graduating from Harvard, she began working in an office as a strategy and outsourcing consultant, and in 2008, after a trip to Kenya, she decided to launch her famous Samasource project. At that time, nurtured by her work as a consultant, she realized that the little internet cafes that could be found throughout the country could act as leverage, as work centers, for the digital logistics chains that develop within large international companies : Microwork.

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« When I got back from that trip in Kenya, » she says, « I thought : and what if I could transform the outsourcing sector so that people with low incomes could benefit from odd jobs, just like Muhammad Yunus had transformed the banking system into microfinance? (Read our article «On a world tour to spread microfinance» p.108) What if I could train the youth living in the slums to perform small tasks via the Internet so as they could earn a living? In September 2008, I launched Samasource and since then we haven’t stopped growing. We now employ 8,000 people, all from very poor backgrounds. »

If the project has continued to grow since 2008, if it is now successful, you’ve got to remember that all this is only possible because Leila never once backed down in the face of adversity. « The biggest challenges and obstacles we encountered were in the early days, » says Leila, « when we tried to gather capital to launch our business model. I launched Samasource in 2008 and the very same month there was a massive market crash. There were not many people who made money that year, so I really had to fight hard to make this project a non-profit entity. I wanted to show the world that it was possible to build a model of social enterprise, a business that would get as many people out of poverty as possible, but that would do so in a sustainable way, with a solid economic model. The project was therefore, in a way, something between the traditional idea of a charitable association and that of a business. This concept of social enterprise was still quite new in the USA when I launched Samasource. Now it’s more widespread, but it still confuses people. So it was very difficult in the early days to raise funds and to make donors understand that even if we had a business model that worked, we still needed to raise money to run the business and to train people. As a result, we started recruiting bigger contributors, such as Google.org, The Sisko Foundation, Rockefeller and MasterCard Foundation. We gradually became more mainstream, so it became easier to raise money. « The other challenge was that we had to convince people that they could have faith in doing business in Africa. We had to convince these societies to trust us, to trust in our work, to realize that there are millions of young people in developing countries who have finished high school and who are therefore really

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Leila Janah capable of working seriously, but who are simply disconnected from the market, disconnected from opportunities. Indeed, rather than seeing them as charity cases, as people to whom we should give alms, we really need to re-write the perceptions we have of these people, in order to see them as capable and full of desires, like workers who can contribute to something. It wasn’t easy at first for many of our clients, but we started by doing free trials, then we gained their confidence by working hard and by showing them that we really could do a good job. So much so that now many of our clients don’t even realize that we are a non-profit organization, or a social impact brand. They choose us because we provide the most qualitative data processing service. Which I think is an incredible lesson to be had by all. » A lesson to be had by all. This visionary and judicious project is a success that seems to be exempt of all ethical and economic criticism. But more precisely, what does working for Sama consist of? Basically, when you work for Leila Janah’s company, you are involved in vast digital projects. You can be asked to tag images, for example, or to make notifications, examine the markets or charter. The required training is provided by Sama, who works extensively in the field, including Kenya, Uganda, India and Haiti, where the company operates in partnership with local, nonprofit organizations which help recruit people who earn - and this is typical in developing countries - less than two dollars and fifty cents a day. But apart from Africa, India and Haiti, Samasource also operates in the USA now, where the company works with a lowincome population, people who earn less than the local minimum wage needed to survive. « The impact on people’s lives is substantial,» explains Leila. « It’s really about getting people out of poverty. Since we started, we have helped 8,000 people and their families. So about 35,000 people have gone from a salary of about two dollars a day to more than eight dollars a day. It’s an important increase in income, which brings a real change of life for those who live in poverty. In Kenya, for example, we studied how our employees spent their extra income and we saw a tremendous improvement in the quality of food they ate. We were also able to observe the fact that they were getting better education, that they were spending more to pay for healthcare and that they were leaving shantytowns for more secure housing. In addition, we have also seen

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a certain improvement in their self-confidence and self-esteem. So we’re working to really get people out of poverty, but in an ethical way. Many people think that doing business in developing countries means that you are going to exploit people. Which is completely false. I think the best way to address poverty is to do business in poor countries but in an ethical way. You have to pay people based on the minimum local wage, making sure that they benefit from this and that their standard of living increases. I think that it is the best thing we can do for them and that it’s much better than providing them with humanitarian aid. » Leila’s position is clear and firm. With Samasource, this young American knows where she is going. And yet, even if she is fully aware of the impact that she is having on the world, she remains extremely humble. Although it has already changed the lives of several thousand people, Leila is not ready to stop there. « I feel like we haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg yet, » continues the young entrepreneur, who has already been rewarded for her work. « I rather feel that our sphere of intervention is still very small. I want Samasource to become ten times what it is today. I suppose that the struggle for every entrepreneur is to realize that the important thing is not in the daily success, but in the overall work accomplished. You also have to realize that you have to undertake a very long journey in order to make a real change in this world, whatever it is. And in my opinion, I’m just getting started. » A first step which besides Samasource has also taken the form of two new entities that Leila has created in recent years : Samaschool, a program that provides vocational training for young Americans in need and LXMI, a fair trade brand of international luxury cosmetics with an international focus - additional proof, if need be, that Leila Janah has both feet in the future and knows how to juggle pure business with social work. Moreover, when I ask her about her vision of the future, she replies with a worried tone in her voice. But you can hear that she still has hope and faith in the capacities of the internet. « I’m really paying attention to the future, » she concludes as our interview comes to an end. « Especially now that all

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The Frame

nationalist movements are gaining momentum. As a child of immigrants who grew up in a country that was different from that of my parents, I really feel that the world is changing, that it’s more open than it was before. But one day these boundaries will no longer have any meaning and it frightens me that we’re going to end up heading in the other direction. » « The Internet really has a powerful role to play in opening the world, opening people’s minds. And I hope that every human being will have access to the internet in the future. » « In addition, I think we could use the internet more to try and understand a little better the huge social and environmental challenges that threaten the planet today and to disseminate true and conscious information. » A world with even more internet ... If only everyone could make conscious use of the internet, if everyone saw it as a powerful tool to help world issues like Leila does, perhaps we wouldn’t have to fear it so much and would use it for the right reasons. At the end of the day, one thing is certain, if the future is to be played out on the internet at least Leila Janah will be there which I for one find reassuring.

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Leila Janah

workers

1,827 income dependents

students

2 5 ,1 1 2

people impacted since 2008

8 ,1 2 7

51,982*

*Includes number of patients treated by Samahope.

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No Dickheads Policy with Dare Jennings

« I was kind of a less doing student at Sydney University, but I had great fun. I just didn’t do very much for a while. When I was in my 20s, in the 1970s, I was pretty lazy, went surfing, and I didn’t work. After having a very quiet 20s, I started to get moving in my 30s. » Born in 1950 in Griffith, New South Wales, that’s how Dare Jennings, founder of two hugely successful modern-day brands, describes himself. With Mambo, entrepreneur Jennings established an Australian iconic clothing label in 1984 and sold it in 2000 (for a $20-million sale). Six years later, the creative Australian founded a custom motorcycle brand Deus Ex Machina, a business inspired by a time where there was no cultural distinction between motorbikes and surfing. We sat down with Dare Jennings to discuss how he’d used his wisdom to turn his hobbies - surfing, rock, music, motorcycles - into two multi-million dollar businesses.

Interview and words : Elisa Routa. Photos : Courtesy of Deus Ex Machina

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The Frame Tell us more about the very beginning of Australian surfculture icon Mambo clothing? I had a printing business, I was interested in that term into Mambo which turned into a world successful business, much to my surprise! But at the same time I also had an independent record label called Phantom Records, where we released independently local bands in Sydney. Those two things tended to work together. Music, art, rock-and -roll and all of the things that I was interested in sort of worked together. I’m very good at starting things. Then, Mambo got very big. I get bored very quickly, especially when things grow and it just becomes about management and all sorts of things. I have the attention span of a two-year old. Mambo’s growth in the 80’s was truly dramatic, you became recognized around the world. How would you explain such a success with Mambo? The thing about Mambo was it was only about things that me and my friends enjoyed doing. It was music, art, surfing and having fun. It began to represent the Australia of that era. Which again, rather than the intention, was just the way it turned out: the way we expressed ourselves and the way we saw the world. Mambo became a very Australian way to express

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yourself and then it just kept growing and growing. Being included in the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, to be honest, it was probably the height of it all. It’s just become too big and too obvious. We were too expected, I think. So at that point in 2000, I decided to sell it. But I had this other idea bubbling away in my head, mainly from going to Tokyo and seeing all these cool motorbikes. At this stage, I’m in my 60s so I’m not a youngster anymore, but what I was seeing in Tokyo was a reference. The reference was classic, it was vintage, but the way it was expressed was very contemporary. I thought this was cool. Because Mambo was being in the surf industry, I really disliked the Surf industry, even though we were in the business. To me, there was no fun, there was no humour in that, they considered things incredibly seriously. The surf industry was dominated by the big brands. So there were all these things that I didn’t like, but I still liked the activity of surfing. So what I thought I could do was to combine the things that I enjoyed and create another brand. In fact, sort of take on the surf industry in a different way. So, that was the way Mambo started to appear to me.

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Dare Jennings In 2000, at the age of 50, you sold Mambo, pocketing $20million just before things got ugly in surfwear. In 2006, you founded Deus. Where did your vision come from exactly? From the beginning, I never wanted to be a motorcycle company. As much as I love motorcycles, as I said before, I have a very slow attention span. I like a lot of things. I also like when different things work together and create a more interesting new idea. We then worked with what we call the sum of the parts. The sum of the parts ends up creating a more interesting whole. When we’ve started, because it was motorbikes we were doing, everyone said that it couldn’t work. When bicycles had become popular, we started to do bicycles and everyone said: « No you can’t do motorbikes and bicycles ». But that’s what we do! I have a motorbike, I have a bicycle. I’m sure they can operate together. Then, because Australians are very enthusiastic surfers, I started to bring surfing into that. People were really shocked to see surfboards and motorcycles together. But then, everyone went ‘Well, I guess it’s okay!’. Now it’s very common to see surfing and motorcycling coexisting. So that was the fun years, being contrary. To me, whenever someone tells you ‘You shouldn’t do something’, it’s a good time to start to do it.

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Is being a crossover business a key component to success? Exactly, I think if there was just one thing, I’d get bored with it. The fact that people can find things in it. It’s important to remember that a 20-year old isn’t going to be as enthusiastic as a 60-year old. Otherwise, you get locked into a demographic. And Deus wasn’t just two worlds, it was about 6 worlds. I wanted to bring worlds that had always been close to my heart, so I wanted to bring art into it. There was food, there was clothing, etc. I wanted to have them all. To be honest, I’ve always found people who are really narrow-minded very boring. Good for them, but it’s better to have a rich and varied life than to be obsessed with one thing. Again, just because this is what I do doesn’t make me correct. Some people I know are obsessed with one thing and their obsession is interesting. But, for me, I like to see different things. And the great thing about Deus was in attracting interesting people. If you do something interesting, interesting people will come. There was something fresh and interesting going on.

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The Frame

< >> South to Sian: Harrison Roach and Zye Norris went on a 4,000km two-wheeled, single-finned escape from the the real-world burdens of modern life through the Indonesian archipelago

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Dare Jennings

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The Frame Deus Ex Machina is bigger than a brand: You celebrate a culture of creativity. Can you talk about the Deus community? I’d like to say there was some sort of plan that I had, but I’m just so happy that it turned out like that. What I found incredible was this idea we had in Sydney. The atmosphere was completely appropriate in pretty much any country around the world. I found that really interesting that French people love surfing, they love motorcycles, they love food, they love all these things and are happy to see them come together. One of the most amazing things was when Federico Minoli, who was the CEO Ducati for ten Years, flew to Sydney to see us because he was interested in what we were doing. He’s like a psych to the motorcycle world. Which is incredible for us, that he came down to see us. He said ‘There’s something going on here’. He went back to Italy and then started the Deus place in Milan, that’s been very successful. Through that, suddenly we were talking to an Italian motorcycle population, cycling people, fashion people. So, it went in different places.

There’s an expression that we have, it’s a No Dickheads Policy.

Today, you have stores in Venice Beach, Milan, Sydney and Bali. Was it the idea from the beginning to take Deus international? No, because of Mambo, I knew about that, then we got spinning that it could work. But we were mainly approached by people. Bali was interesting because, as Australians, we go to Bali. Dustin (Humphrey), who is a very well known surf photographer, wanted to do something. So it seemed like a good idea! Then, we’ve met Julian (Heppekausen), an Australian guy living in Venice, in California. He loves motorcycling, he loves the way we think, so he wanted to do that. It’s like when Federico came to see us from Milan and wanted to do something in Milan. Minoli decided that Italy wasn’t covered and we thought northern Italy, in particular Milano, because of its combination of coolness and love of anything that runs on two wheels. But it has never been a 10-year plan. If it seems like a good idea, then we can do it. That’s how it works.

< The Deus Fish Fry in Bali >> Deus Ex Machina Tokyo Flagship Store

Deus is all about inclusiveness, authenticity, and enthusiasm. How will you manage to protect this DNA in the future? There’s an expression that we have, it’s a No Dickheads Policy. So we have to try to deal with nice people who understand the idea of what we’re doing, of what’s important. That’s the easiest thing we’ve done, but we do try very hard to stick with people who understand the point of what we’re doing. And, to be honest, after 10 years, we have to evolve, we have to keep moving and keeping it fresh. I think that’s been a problem that we’ve seen, especially with custom motorcycling. People start out, and they do it, and it sort of doesn’t move on. There’re so many people who started doing custom motorcycling, but it’s very hard to make it progress. It’s a problem with the industry.

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Dare Jennings

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The Frame Is keeping evolving the basement of your success? Yes, that is the idea. Not change for change’s sake, just to try to keep the ideas kind of rolling along. And remember that it is a philosophy. And this philosophy can apply in so many different ways. I think that’s probably the most essential element to it. When we first started, it was easy to shock people and get people angry, happy or whatever in what we were doing. Today, we are kind of more predictable in that way, so that’s become a different deal. How do you see the brand growing in the coming years? What I’d like to do is do something interesting in different countries. We’re working at the moment on a place in Bangkok. Because, again, being Australians, we often go to Thailand. Thai people are progressive, interesting, they love food, they love motorcycles. We’ve just been to Cape Town, in South Africa. South Africans are very confortable with the idea and the way we think. And, it’s trying to find interesting people in these places and let what they do feed back into the bigger idea. Traditionally, business is when you go to a country and tell them exactly what to do, whereas I’m kinda more interested in going there and seeing what they’re doing, that’s good and interesting. And I try to bring that back into the big idea, so the big idea keeps moving. Since 2006, what have been your biggest challenges? I was very lucky because I sold Mambo so I had money. So I could ride out the hard part and stick to the idea. But in a way, our business is apparel, because apparel is a business that can grow a lot so in a lot of ways, we have a cultural base and we believe in it. But in a lot of ways, the things that keep us alive and going is apparel. Then, second to that, the terrible fact is it’s almost impossible to make money from building motorcycles. You can do it for love and for labour, we love doing it, but there’s no way you can get rich from doing it. So, you have to be pragmatic in business, you need to keep things growing and moving and the apparel could do that. I know other companies who are successful apparel companies and they laugh at how much time we spend on the cultural side of what we do. But in the end, that’s the thing people love and relate to.

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What would be the advice you’d give to entrepreneurs who want to create a successful business? You’ve got to find a way to make money. That’s just a reality. Otherwise, it’s indulgent. And I guess, again, you have to be careful of indulgence. So, there’s got to be some kind of business plan but it’s also got to be a passion that you believe in. So you don’t just have to go do market researches because you just know what it is, you know what the market is, what you believe. But in the end, there’s no blueprint, you just have to find things that you believe in and hopefully, they’re relevant and will find their place in the world. What are the projects for Deus? Korea would be fantastic. There’s more we can do in Indonesia, we could do a lot more in the US as well. We have a base. Again, I’d like to do less but better. It’s not this crazy that we gonna have places everywhere, if we do The terrible fact is it’s almost something, there needs to be a meaning for it. In impossible to a lot of ways, the apparel make money distribution can carry a from building business and allow us motorcycles. to find our places where we need to sell. There’s certainly a lot more to do in Europe. We worked with our friend Benjamin (Marigot) and we’d love to do something in Biarritz. Benjamin is a classic example, he came to Sydney, and he wouldn’t go away. He wanted to do something in France, but I said ‘I think it’s too early, we’re still figuring out what we doing’. And he just stayed there. He is a believer. And it worked when you see events like the Wheels and Waves in Biarritz, France.. Wheels and Waves is amazing how they’ve just grown. Now, they’re worried that it’s too big! Which is not a bad problem to have. Events like the Luftgekühlt Porsches event created by Patrick Long is a great example as well. Patrick (Long) is a great example of somebody who believed in Deus. He came to Venice and said ‘We want to do a Porches event. We want to create an event like you guys do, with fun and interesting unexpected things.’ The Luftgekühlt project has been great and an amazing thing to participate in. (Read our interview with Patrick Long p.74) The world gets to be a big place after a while when you start travelling around it.

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Dare Jennings

< Dare Jennings and Carby Tuckwell outside the Deus store in Tokyo

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Dare Jennings

Whenever someone tells you « You shouldn’t do something », it’s a good time to start to do it.

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02/ MODERN MINDS /

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Inspiring stories

Patagonia, « Responsible for doing good » Jason Fried, « Move cities, Keep your job »

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Modern minds

PATAGONIA

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36 Part 01 with Rick Ridgeway 48 Part 02 with Léa Brassy

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Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard started out as a climber in 1953. Chouinard was known as one of the leading climbers of the ‘Golden Age of Yosemite Climbing’. In the late 50’s, he launched Chouinard Equipment and started to sell steel pitons out of the back of his pickup. Aware that the pitons were causing damage to the cracks in mountains, Chouinard worked on a new model of aluminum chockstones. A new style of climbing was born: « The Clean Climbing ». In 1973, when he developed clothing and gear inspired by his love of the outdoors and his commitment to the environment, he decided to launch Patagonia as a privately held outdoor clothing company specializing in high quality clothing for adventure sports based in Ventura, California. At that time, Yvon Chouinard selected the following mission statement for the company: «Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.» Since the very beginning, his pro-environmental philosophy and his company have been completely intertwined. Today, Patagonia is considered to be a world leader in environmentally sustainable business practices and products. Celebrating its 40th year of existence in 2016, Patagonia has proven that a good business can result from strong values. Through responsible economy campaigns and initiatives, Patagonia continues its very best to lead that trend in sustainability in an innovative way. Despite the company’s anti-growth strategy and its anti-materialistic stance, Patagonia generates yearly sales of approximately $600 million. Giving the floor to Rick Ridgeway, Chouinard’s old climbing partner and Patagonia’s Vice President of Environmental Affairs, we chose to take business lessons from an inspirational leader. We also met Patagonia’s surfing ambassador and passionate waterwoman Léa Brassy who talks us through what the brand truly is : a glorious and innovative business model with good intentions.

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36 Part 01

with Rick Ridgeway

We discovered that you could actually do well for the business and do well for the planet at the same time. That was a founding lesson. Rick Ridgeway started his mountaineering career in the late 60’s, then spent two years sailing in the Pacific. In 1976, he was on the second American team to climb Mount Everest. Two years later, he and three others were the first Americans to summit K2 and the first from any nation to do it without any supplemental oxygen. Called « The Real Indiana Jones » by Rolling Stone Magazine, Ridgeway also survived a Himalayan avalanche and walked from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean. In 2003, Yvon Chouinard offered him his very first corporate job : to represent Patagonia’s core values and to express his business ethics to a wider audience. Meet Rick Ridgeway, a noted climber, filmmaker & writer, who is also Patagonia’s Vice President of Environmental Affairs, overseeing Vanguard environmental and sustainability initiatives. Here, as one of the pioneering figures in the outdoor industry, he talks us through Patagonia’s environmental ingenuity and the power of transparency.

> Rick Ridgeway & Yvon Chouinard, in Alaska

Interview and words : Elisa Routa Photos : Jeff Johnson & Patagonia Archives, Roger Cotton, Gordon Wiltsie, Tom Frost

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Modern minds Tell us more about your background and journey, from had a very close relationship with Patagonia and mountaineer-adventurer to Patagonia Vice President of the with it’s founder and owner Yvon Chouinard. Our Environmental issues. families are extremely close; our oldest daughters My interest in outdoor sports started when I was are best friends and their daughter’s daughters are very young. I was just attracted to mountains and best friends too. wild places. I was in high school and I had just figured out that I really wanted to be a mountaineer What factors drove you to go beyond mountaineering but I couldn’t find anybody else who shared the and exploration to take on a leading role in sustainability same passion as me. So I bought a book, I went to initiatives? a store, bought some equipment and I started to In the 1980s and 1990s, I continued to explore all go to the mountains by myself just to teach myself. the wild places in the world. I started to personally Thanks to climbing books, I started climbing in the witness the degradation of the wilderness. I was able mountains of California on my own. I grew up in the to see the extinction of countless places that, when orange groves of Southern California in the 50’s and I was a young man, were still wild. I could see the 60’s. I used to ditch school and go up the mountains continual cutting of the forests and I was even able on my Honda 50cc motor scooter and hike around. to feel an effective climate change with the retreat So my mother was worried about me and she found of glaciers and the melting of the ice. Especially a school for my graduation. I learned more there in Africa, where my favorite climb of all times was but I also met a few people who started to introduce Mount Kenya, when I climbed the Ice Window route me to other climbers. That was the beginning of in the mid 1980s. In the past 20 years, the paths to the my life as a mountaineer and a climber. At climb have ceased to exist. They the same time, I was also interested in the gone and will never come In addition to are ocean, I used to go surfing in high school back. Returning to the Himalayas making quality in the 2000s, I could see in just and in college. I continued to climb and to sail boats. I sailed on the Pacific Ocean with and durable a short period of 20 years the different people. My first big adventure products, we visible retreat of the glaciers that was when I was only 17 years old. I left on in the late also actively try I70’shadandphotographed a small sailboat with friends yet none of us early 80’s. When I went to encourage back in the 2000s, the glaciers really knew how to navigate. We bought a book about navigating, took the boat and our customers had gone, they had retreated sailed to Tahiti. I sailed all over the Pacific to not buy what by half. I went back there with ocean on that little boat. I continued to go my old photographs and I could to the mountains and climb. The more I they don’t need. compare the exact place. There went there, the more I enjoyed going to was only half of the ice left. That remote places. I think my interests about the Earth was so alarming for me to see that the planet was goes back to those experiences. Over the years, I got historically changing and that geological changes more and more committed to it, I figured out how could happen during the timeline of humans. In the to make a living from being adventurous, writing 90s and early 2000s, Yvon and our close climbing books, making movies and taking photographs. I companion, Doug Tompkins, the founder of The was also developing a small business as a consultant North Face and then of Esprit Clothing Company for outdoor equipment companies, helping them were also deeply alarmed. We were beginning to with their marketing strategies. I did that for 25 meet environmental thinkers who were introducing years. One of my clients was Patagonia and one of Yvon and I to new ideas about what was really going my main climbing partners was Yvon Chouinard, on on the planet. By the 90s, I went back to my earlier the founder of Patagonia. I started climbing with career as a filmmaker and writer, photographer and Yvon before Patagonia even existed. So I’ve always, consultant. I had a media licence company and from the very beginning, been involved with the Patagonia was one of my clients. I then joined the company. Not as an employee but as Yvon’s friend board of Directors of Patagonia in 2002 and a couple and also as a contracter who helped them with their of years later they invited me to join the company as marketing. In the early years, I was one of their an employee to oversee the environmental initiatives main photographers. I helped produce some of the department and also to work for the marketing company’s catalogues. Then, when I got married in department. To tell stories about our companies and 1982, my wife went to work for Patagonia and she coenvironmental commitments, to explain to people founded the marketing department. So I’ve always where the urgency of our environmental concerns

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Rick Ridgeway were, with a long bearing witness to the changing of the planet. So I accepted that and joined the company in 2005. And still am. Can you tell us more about the brand’s mission statement? The company has always been committed to environmental protection. Which goes back to the founding of the company in the early 1970’s, before Patagonia even existed. We were in the business making equipment for climbers and mountaineers and we knew that the traditional pitons that we were making for climbers were damaging the mountains. We were literally making holes in the rock. So we continued to work on new designs until we found an alternative to pitons. We developed a new technology, creating aluminium chocks that you could place in the cracks. With that, you didn’t have to hammer pitons in and out of the cracks in the rocks. And so that solved that problem, but it was also a business. We replaced the pitons with something which was more environmentally responsible and it improved our business. We discovered that you could actually do well for the business and do well for the planet, at the same time. That was a founding lesson. Then, once Yvon created the clothing company and called it Patagonia in 1973, he made the clothes with the same commitment to durability and quality than he did with the climbing equipment. He also made the clothes with the same commitment to reducing the environmental impact of footprints on the apparel. So right from the start, the company had this commitment. He started to use the success of the business to support the environmental movement. We felt it was very important, in addition to making products that were environmentally responsible. That was the origin of our ground program, which then became the 1% For The Planet program. By the early 1990s, the company was able to develop a mission around these ideas and values. And that mission was to build the best products that caused no unnecessary harm to the environment and then to use the business to implement solutions to the environmental crisis. This mission still guides us in our short and long term decisions. It guides how we conduct our business and in fact, it represents widely our investments. With the privately held company, we get to have much more latitude and liberty of what we do with business. In our case, what we want to do is use it as a tool for environmental protection. And not just as a business. That’s not the purpose or goal of our business.

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Patagonia has cemented their position as the world leader in Environmental and Sustainable business practices. How do you feel about that? It is an important development for us, we hope we can convince other companies to follow our lead. We are always encouraging other companies to join us. Unfortunately, the update is very slow. It takes time to get other companies to commit to environmentally responsible products. The best product is also almost always the most durable product because for us, durability is the central component of quality. When a product can last for a long long time, and that’s the case, not just for our wetsuits but for the jackets that we make for example, they’ll be used for many years. I run into customers constantly when I’m traveling, I meet people who know that I’m coming to an event so they’ll wear Patagonia’s clothes. They come to me and they go « Look, I bought this jacket in 1985 and it still works very well. I’m still proud to wear it. » So we tell our customers that we may have a jacket that they could wear for 20 years and that the environmental footprints of that jacket have gone way way down because it will last for so long. Which is the case of our Swiss products. Last year, we made a strategic investment in Beyond Surface Technologies (BST), a Swiss startup that’s developing high-quality, durable textiles based on natural raw materials. In 2011, you placed a full-page memorable advertisement in The New York Times that read, « Don’t Buy This Jacket ». How did Patagonia manage to create partnership trust with customers for the full life-cycle of apparel and footwear? In addition to making quality and durable products, we also actively try to encourage our customers to not buy what they don’t need. And that’s what that ad refers to. We encourage our customers to not buy more than they need and are constantly redesigning our products so as they last a very long time. We make those products with no unnecessary harm to the environment to the fullest extent possible. Our business is about creating more solutions than problems on our planet. So, going back to the « Don’t buy this jacket » ad, that headline shocks people because it came out on Black Friday, at the beginning of the United States’ Christmas holiday shopping. Four pages in The New York Times. But the headline was meant to shock people because we wanted them to stop, read the copy and the ad. Because there, below the photograph of one of our all-time best jackets, we explained that no matter how hard we tried to make unnecessary harm, it still requires 200 liters of water to make it and it still released 20 pounds of greenhouse gas emission. The ad was designed to get people to not

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Modern minds

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Rick Ridgeway

< California, 1955 > Rick climbing Filchner Mountains, Antarctica

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Modern minds buy a jacket if they didn’t need one. Of course, we realize that we are all going to wear clothes, but the idea is to not buy more than you actually need. When you do buy something, make sure you invest in quality and durability. Even if initially it costs more, you are going to save money over time and more importantly you are going to be a responsible citizen by reducing your own personal footprints if you buy durable, quality products which have less impact on the environment. Furthermore, through our programs we invite our customers to come to us so as we can help them repair clothes that have been torn or damaged. We help them sell clothes, find new owners or bring them back to us when they’re truly worn out. So we can use the best technologies to recycle them. Patagonia’s Worn Wear program was created in 2013 as a way of encouraging people to take good care of their gear. Tell us more about the program. The program of repair, resell and recycle is wrapped up into our Worn Wear Initiative. The Worn Wear initiative is our promise to our customers to make sure that the product is as durable as possible and that it causes the least harm to the environment as possible. It’s our request to them to partner with us and, consequently, they will be as responsible as possible for their part. That’s our partnership of full product responsibility. The third part of our mission, which is to implement solutions to the environmental crisis, has been a key to business. No matter how hard we try to make a product with no unnecessary harm, they still harm the environment. We are conscious of that and want to own up to it. We consider the 1% Program to be our contribution to the environmental movement for the harm that we are causing with our business. We’re trying to do, as Yvon says, our pennant. The main way we do that is by supporting environmental groups; we take 1% of our sales and the money goes to environmental groups all over the world. They are mostly small groups with a lot of volunteers who are working to save the forests, rivers and beaches. After 60 years of neoprene dependency, you recently launched the world’s first neoprene-free wetsuits, offering an alternative to surfers, giving them a chance to choose plants over petroleum and renewables over non-renewables… The part of our mission’s statement to make the best products with no unnecessary harm is what traditional business now call sustainability. We do that in many different ways. And certainly one of the most important ways is through our selection of environmentally friendly materials. In many

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cases, we have worked hard in order to develop new materials and, in the case of the wetsuits, it has evolved into a collaboration with Yulex, a clean technology company developing agricultural-based biomaterials for medical, consumer, industrial and bioenergy products. We replaced the traditional wetsuits made from a synthetic rubber called neoprene, that as you know, is a nonrenewable material, derived from crude oil, made from petroleum, with a rubber that’s made from rubber trees, grown carefully in areas where they maintain healthy forests, making sure that they do not disturb the biodiversity in that forest. As Patagonia doesn’t want to contribute to the deforestation in tropical zones, we made sure that the natural rubber we use comes from sources that are Forest Stewardship Council (FCS) certified. One of the key points of our Yulex wetsuits is that they reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 80% less than they would if they were using petroleum based-neoprene. How would you explain the growth of the brand despite the company’s anti-materialistic stance? The customers partner with us. They buy products without buying more than they need. More and more people want to be responsible for the planet and want to reduce their personal footprints on it. And they know that buying our products is a way that they can do that and that they can trust us to tell them the absolute truth. We’re fully transparent with everything we do. So we continue to grow in a market that’s essentially going very slowly in outdoor apparel. We’re continuing to succeed as a business and that is how we manage to put back even more money into our ground programs. The more we succeed, the more powerful we become as an agent for environmental protection. We act more and more like an NGO in some ways and customers like that so they come to us. But now here’s the conundrum: As we continue to succeed as a business, other companies that don’t have the same commitments are not doing as well. So what’s going to happen to the global economy if Patagonia continues to succeed but a lot of other companies don’t and that global growth starts to go down? We feel at Patagonia that global growth is the underlining source of all environmental degradations. This continuous growth is at the origin of the environmental crisis. That’s the cause of it all and, to reduce the impact and footprints of human beings on planet Earth, the solution is to go right to the cause. We also feel, here at the company, that even if we put together all the sustainability innovations, including our own with more environmentally friendly materials, we’re still

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Rick Ridgeway not doing enough to cancel out the impact of an expanding population which is using more and more business services. To the extent where the planet on a global basis can’t even restore its own resources, where human beings are globally using more than 1.5 times that the planet can give back on an annual basis. When we look at it from a higher perspective, we come to the conclusion that the only solution is of course to continue to be committed to environmental sustainability, to continue to innovate new sustainability solutions that reduce the impact that the products have on the environment. But in addition to that, we are going to have to reduce the amount of products and services that we actually use on a global level. The consumption has to go down and in fact, that trend has starting to catch on right now. Our consumption patterns are changing and we feel that we have a business model that allows us to continue to succeed. We are optimistic with our own products although we’re perhaps not quite so optimistic about where we’re all going to end up with the planet if we continue to abuse it.

Our business is about creating more solutions than problems on our planet.

What is global economy going to look like in 2050? All businesses are going to start to go into decline as is human society. Globalization is really not a viable model. The first weaknesses in globalization are starting to emerge in the whole world right now. You can see it all coming to light. Globalization is under threat. Consumption is under threat. So adding some additional services into the mix is going to be really important. We consider Worn Wear to be a service that we provide for our customers. We are also getting into food, as food is the product that we’re most responsible for; human footprints on the planet. Food offers the biggest potential for finding solutions. So we’re moving to food because we feel that, with our business model, by focusing on food and clothing, we can offer more solutions than with any other category of products. Patagonia is now moving away from “causing no unnecessary harm” (or sustainability) to “doing good” (which is regenerative). With this new venture, what do you hope for? One of our recent ventures includes Patagonia Provisions. With this initiative, Patagonia has partnered with First Nation fishermen in British Columbia to offer sustainable Pacific smoked salmon and jerky products. We hope to be profitable, sustainable and influential to other companies looking to pursue similar practices in preserving and restoring the environment. Regenerating agriculture is the most important thing that we’re pursuing right now and that’s why we are excited about our new food products. It’s a promise we made. Through our Patagonia Provisions, a new division of the outdoor gear company, we believe that food can and should be grown, harvested and produced in ways that restore the land, water and wildlife. Patagonia Provisions is about finding solutions to repair the chain. As I said earlier, making our jackets is harmful to the planet. There’s no way around it. But imagine if the jacket was made from a natural fiber—cotton or wool—that had been grown from animals that were fed using regenerative procedures/protocols. And that those procedures brought the soil back to sufficient health which then pulled carbon out of the air and put it back into the ground. Well, now your jacket is part of the climate change solution…Yes, when you buy a product like that jacket, you are actually buying a little part of the solution towards climate change. In the coming months and years, we’ll offer a growing selection of food that addresses environmental issues and will continue to encourage & support local food producers. That takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment. One thing we also do is that we also work with the most transparency we can. We don’t hide. We’re very transparent. That has created a lot of trust from the customers. We found that being transparent is not as difficult as it sounds, people appreciate the honesty. And instead of coming after with more criticism, they often want to partner with you to find solutions.

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Since 1973, what have been your biggest challenges as one of the world’s most sustainable brands? We have a lot of challenges all the time. One of the biggest challenges that we have and that will never go away is the challenge of the two main parts of our mission; to make the best products with no unnecessary harm to the planet. A classic case was a study that was done at The University of California in Berkeley. The Business school did a case study about the potential that our mission statement had and it was specifically on the chemicals that we are using in our jackets and the fabrics of our gear and clothing to make them water-repellent. As chemicals are harmful to the environment, we’ve developed a new chemical that is not as harmful as the one it replaced. But it is still harmful. And at the same time the alternatives reduced dramatically the durability of the product. So we had to make a calculation. We realized that if we were to use the chemical that was the least harmful to the planet, the product would also only last a year or maybe 2 years of the most and then you’d have to replace it. And we realized that the environmental footprints of replacing the jackets every year to 2 years would be more harmful than if we stayed with the chemical that we were using that still causes some harm but allows the products to last longer. So we had a tough decision to make. At the same time we made an even deeper commitment to finding better solutions, better chemistry solution. So we created an investment event. We bought an ownership position in a company in Switzerland called Beyond Surface Technologies (BST), a company focused on making high-performance textile treatments based on natural raw materials. We worked very closely with them and we’re a part owner of the company now. So again, we’re doing what we can to meet that mission. That takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment. One thing we also do is to try and work with the most transparency as we possibly can. We don’t hide. We’re very transparent. That has created a lot of trust from our customers. We found that being transparent is not as difficult as it sounds, people appreciate the honesty. And instead of coming after you with more criticism, they often want to partner with you to find solutions.

geese in Hungary are raised for foie gras, which involves force-feeding them to fatten the liver. So we said « we didn’t know that. » We then started a campaign against it. We told them « You were right, but we didn’t know this. Of course we deserve to be criticized. » Brands making products using feather down have an impact on the welfare of animals, the environment and the communities in the supply chain of down & feathers. So we wanted to find a solution and started being very transparent about all of our efforts. Then eventually, the NGO partnered with us. They realized how serious we were and worked with us to develop and establish clear standards and a robust methodology for sourcing feather down in an effort to prevent unnecessary harm to the animals involved. Our Traceable Down Standard was created to ensure that all independent third-party verifications and certification audits were completed to the same principles, scope, and methodology. When you’re fully transparent with somebody who is initially criticizing you, you can partner with him to find a solution. Instead of causing more harm, you’re doing more good. What would be the advice you’d give to entrepreneurs who wish to create a successful business? To commit to full transparency, which means being willing to tell your customers the truth and to commit to reducing your impact, knowing that the impact never goes away. Then I would advise any young entrepreneur with a startup to think about a business model that’s going to be rebellious in the long term, that is the world’s way of thinking right now. And, lastly, to have a business model and products that are responsible for the planet, as responsible as they possibly can be. >> Yvon Chouinard, California, 1972 > Doug Tompkins, Rick Ridgeway, Yvon Chouinard

That’s what happened with the Animal welfare NGO in Germany? Exactly, we had that experience-example with our feather down products. An animal welfare NGO based in Germany told us that, in their researches, they had discovered that we were using feather down from goose farms and grey geese. Grey

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Rick Ridgeway

Yvon Chouinard also started to use the success of the business to support the environment movement.

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Modern minds

I know it sounds crazy, but every time I have made a

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YVON CHOUINARD /

I have made a decision that is best for the planet, I have made money. 47 Patagonia

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48 Part 02

with Léa Brassy

My mind needs space, needs to take its time, needs close contact with nature. Léa Brassy caught her first wave at the age of 11 on the beaches of Normandy. At 14, she enrolled in a surf school, and two years later she was already experiencing a self-sufficient approach to life by growing her own organic vegetables. After studying agriculture in the West Indies, she started working as a nurse at the age of 22. Followed by solo trips to New Zealand, memorable surf sessions in the icy waters of northern Norway, van trips to the Lofoten Islands and a crossing of the Atlantic from France to Greenland. Nowadays, Léa splits her life between the narrow habitat of her sailing ship in French Polynesia, the frozen landscapes of Iceland and the beautiful beaches of the southwest of France. We went to meet this passionate environmentalist to evoke her quest for freedom and the importance of representing a brand built around an environmental approach and the values she shares.

> Léa Brassy French Polynesia

Interview and words : Elisa Routa Photos : Vincent Colliard

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Modern minds You live today on a sailboat in Tahiti. Tell us about your penchant for cooler, isolated or even hostile destinations? I try to take a trip in cold waters every winter. I returned to Norway in March this year. These moments are so special to me, although I wouldn’t live there all year round. It’s a nice little break though, especially in winter. I really need this moment of isolation away from the crowded beaches. Even if there is internet access and cars or planes, I’ve come to realize that I prefer quieter, more isolated places. There are fewer offers, fewer activities. When I come to California, for me it’s hard. It’s neither natural nor very comfortable. It is a bit like in the Basque country. It’s easy to leave your house and go from point A to point B then come back, connect to the internet and work. But, in order to feel at peace, my mind needs space, needs to take its time, needs close contact with nature. That’s how I get to be creative, otherwise I stay on the surface of things.

It started germinating this seed in my mind that we could do business properly.

You are currently touring California to promote your latest film, «Being There: A Surfing and Skiing Odyssey across Iceland with your boyfriend Vincent Colliard, who is also a great outdoors lover. Was the idea to combine your two universes? The advantage we have is that we share the same passion for adventure. I go to New Zealand alone, he goes to the Himalayas. We have that fiber in common. Whether it applies to cold places, or anywhere else for that matter, it’s the same thing. I know how much he enjoys it and I just want to continue doing what we’re doing and manage to find our own balance. Over the years, we’ve both realized how important it is to let the other have the time and the space they need to go on their own adventures. We both know how precious that is. So we always try to find the time to live our adventures to the fullest and to encourage one another. There are so many set backs in everyday life. Unconditional support is hard to find. So we try to be there for one another. Then there’s a time in the year when it’s important for us to go off and have an adventure together. «Being There» was your annual adventure together? Yes, Being There was the sequel to the reason we met. Vincent had contacted me to do a trip in the cold where we would combine mountaineering and surfing. We’d been dreaming for ages to go skiing just the two of us and search for waves. It took a few years to do so, but Being There is the result of this project. What was important to me when we did Being There was to promote a healthy and positive message for many other couples. I’ve seen so many couples around me who argue and end up breaking up because the guy wants to go surfing all the time and the girl doesn’t surf, I see it every day. I wanted to show that there are couples who manage to really share their passions and that by doing so it multiplies their relationship tenfold. The subject was interesting because surfing isn’t usually shown from this angle.

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What key moment remains a turning point something. Often, there are so many were not ‘decision-makers’. I had in your life? details to sort out, I can’t believe how no connection whatsoever with that There are so many. I decided to hit they manage to stay so straight headed environment. So it opened my eyes to the road because I needed examples, about it all. Not everything is perfect the fact that by consuming you could I needed to meet people who lived but there’s this tremendous will to do also have a positive impact on the world a little differently in order to get my well, to do better for people, better and that by looking at how businesses own idea of what I wanted my life to for the environment. I’m so proud of worked, you were free to choose to be. And I haven’t stopped since. I was that. I would have had such a hard consume either from one or the other. really young when I left home. My time working with a brand that didn’t As consumers, we have a real impact. life instincts are completely different have their will power. After a while, from the ones I had at home. For me, I would have got bored and left. With According to you, the strength of Patagonia it was an imperative, almost instinctive. Patagonia, I find an echo to what I do. is partly due to their marketing strategy? When I was in New Zealand, I met a It’s as if I belonged to the same current The strength of Patagonia is that they gentleman who was about the same age of thought and action, a community have wonderful marketing strategy that as my father. I had just arrived in this of people who are passionate about a really touches people. They manage to city and had met him three times in the simpler, more refined life, where we turn the simplest idea into a wonderful same day. He said «Come, I live just over don’t sweat the small stuff and get rid project. That’s what I find magical about there.» He’d pointed to big houses on a of the unnecessary. I like to think that them, that they are strong enough to beach next to a small town, a somewhat happiness, rather than coming from market things that are ultra simple. If bourgeois residential area. He had this simplicity, comes from sobriety. I like the idea is good and logical, it will speak tiny navy blue house. It was the only that term. Working with Patagonia to most people, people who are not one that still had grass. You could feel reconciles me in a modern way with too disconnected. From the moment that he’d managed to stay the same old the way my grandparents used to work. you fall too far into the consumer hippy he’d been all his life. He said to I realize that before, all we did was to system, it becomes more complicated me «Come meet my daughter, she’s recover, repair, reuse. So to think. When you have learning French.» I thought to myself, I find it pretty unique for Everything several generations who ‘Hmmm, what on earth am I in for a modern business to still I do at have been accustomed to here?’ But I followed my instincts and proceed like this. It’s a logic everything, when Patagonia buying found myself with this fascinating girl that has unfortunately everything is cashable, means disposable, that’s when it who was about 3-4 years older than me. been lost and initiatives, We quickly became close friends and I such as those of Patagonia, something. becomes complicated. became very close with her father. He are in the process of had an extremely off beat way of seeing bringing them up to date. You participated in the development of the things. He shook me up a little, made latest neoprene-free wetsuits created by me think about things differently. He Has Patagonia managed to reconcile you Patagonia. You went to test the wetsuits must have seen that I was searching with the business world? in Iceland. How is such an innovation for myself. He never stopped asking me I didn’t believe in business at all. For conceptualized and put into practice? existential questions. He forced me to me, in business, they were all useless. From the moment that Patagonia ask myself questions, such as ‘Why was We were in Norway with Vincent and decided to make wetsuits, they knew I here, alone in my van, that I had made he was doing his thesis on Patagonia. that the wetsuits were made in large entirely by myself?’ He brought out He was in business studies. He had quantities with petroleum. They knew things I had inside of me. He made me given me this book called «Let My it wasn’t eco-friendly and needed to put words on my childhood dreams. People Go Surfing» by Yvon Chouinard. find solutions. So they started working Things that I couldn’t ignore anymore. The book was full of holes because he on research and development on had cut the photos out to put them neoprene. The largest component of As one of Patagonia’s ambassadors, is it in his graduation folder, so I was neoprene is insulating foam, which is important to be able to represent a brand reading between the holes. It started about 80%. By focusing on this, they that corresponds to your civic approach and germinating this seed in my mind that knew that half the work was already your philosophy of life? we could do business properly. I slowly done. It took them 8 years of research It’s more than just important. It’s started to understand that we could do and development before realizing something that lives inside me, it has things well. I do not come at all from that they could create a plant-based become part of who I am. For me, a business world. My grandparents on neoprene. So they did a lot of testing working with them means so much. both sides were farmers, my parents with different materials. Four years Everything I do at Patagonia means were technicians in electronics. They ago, the first wetsuit to be released

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in the United States was made from day and it takes 1/2 liter to make a suit. You know the founder of Patagonia, Yvon a plant called Guayule, a plant that They produce all year round because it Chouinard, pretty well. How would you grows in the desert without water is in Guatemala and the temperature describe this mythical figure? or additives. Extremely eco-friendly, never changes. So, there was no reason For me, he is someone who is deeply however, it produced very little and the to continue with traditional neoprene passionate and deeply human. He is a manufacturing process required a lot of since we could supply everything and pioneer, someone who is on this earth to accomplish something new. He was energy, so a lot of time and labor. It had a at a lower price. born to inspire people and I think he’s very high environmental and financial cost. They nevertheless released the Patagonia then decided to stop their entire found a way of doing it. He is both a rebel philosopher and a businessman wetsuits but they were really expensive. traditional collection? At one point they didn’t have enough Yes, that’s what they’ve always done at the same time. He is at the head of a Guayule gum to make their wetsuits, for any product when they find a huge business and he has also inspired so they looked for a transition which better solution for the environment. a lot of people. He knows how to be was supposed to be temporary. All It’s what Patagonia stands for and both at the same time. To put it simply ; this was done in partnership with a what Chouinard Equipment stood he knew how to link two worlds that company called Yulex, whose goal for too, before they became known as aren’t used to being linked together was to manufacture plant neoprene. Patagonia. Yvon Chouinard began by anymore. They’re not two antagonistic Yulex needed a financial partner, selling steel pitons out of the back of worlds, it’s just that power and money Patagonia wanted in, Patagonia needed his old station wagon. He sold them to tend to change people and it has not a development partner and Yulex was surfers, who were also often climbers. changed him, not one little bit. That’s there. Yulex needed to temporarily One day, he went to El Capitan in how I see him. He’s someone who is stock up elsewhere, so they went Yosemite and realized that the roads very straight forward, who goes to back to the Hevea, known for their were being modified because of all the the essential and who isn’t afraid of latex surgical gloves and tires. But climbers climbing with steel pitons. changing the direction of the currents Patagonia wasn’t really crazy about The spacing in the cracks in the when he thinks it is necessary to turn the idea because Hevea is known to mountains were being increased by the tide. be a source of deforestation and they hammering in the pitons. He decided didn’t want any amalgams. At the time, straight away that it was absolutely there was nothing they could use to necessary to find a better solution make sure that those Heveas were not because they were damaging nature planted on forests that had just been and their playing field. So he developed deforested for the purpose of making what are known as chockstones. When > Frozen surf money with the Hevea. So they didn’t the product was ready, he went and session in really want to become associated with climbed The Nose, in El Capitan, a very the south of them. A while ago, a company had difficult road in Yosemite. When he saw Iceland, 2014 developed a certification with a drastic that it was doable and safe, he stopped specification on natural rubber. They’d producing steel pitons. He cut off his developed a certification called FSC own money supply overnight. And in (Forest Stewardship Council), which it’s place, he created a business with this >> « La Mascot » is an independent certification that new product. He went off to climb one camper van guarantees ecologically and socially of the hardest mountains of Yosemite parked on responsible exploitation. Patagonia with his new product in order to prove Unstad surf spot in Lofoten and Yulex needed a new source to to everyone that it was safe. And when islands, under a manufacture natural rubber so Yulex he got back, they started selling them. full moon night got in contact with this company That’s where the idea of the Patagonia that certifies forest protection. After catalogue was born, revolutionary in studying the project, it was so satisfying the world of climbing. They promoted that they began to do this in transition ‘clean climbing’. They changed a little and realized that the cost was much the vision people had on climbing. One lower and that they could not only of their commitments has always been: satisfy all the demands for their entire Always choose the sustainable solution range of wetsuits but also that of the with a lower cost for the environment. surfing industry in general. 1 tree produces 1 liter of natural rubber per

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LÃ©a Brassy

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I like to think that happiness, rather than coming from simplicity, comes from sobriety.

LĂŠa in a remote valley in Northern Island, April 2014

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Léa Brassy

< Léa on a right in Iceland, March 2014

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Mihela Hladin Patagonia Environmental & Social Initiatives Manager

We started to donate 1% of our sales to the grassroots organisations in 1985. As a company that uses resources and produces waste, we recognize our impact on the environment and feel a responsibility to give back. It’s not charity or traditional philanthropy, it’s part of the cost of doing business. We call it our Earth Tax. Today we are supporting more than 800 organizations around the world per year, with more than 77 million dollars given away since. 1% for the Planet bring dollars and doers together to address the most pressing issues facing our planet. 1% for the Planet focuses on the following issues: Climate Change, Food, Land, Water, Wildlife and Pollution. Till this day, businesses donated more than 100 million dollars via 1% platform. 1,200+ member businesses place 1% logo on millions of consumer facing products and services.

1% for the Planet initiative = 1,200 member companies in 48 countries giving 1% of their sales to more than 3,300 nonprofit organizations. 2016: Patagonia donated 100% of their global Black Friday sales to grassroots organizations and reached a record-breaking $10 million in sales

One of the major events that we organize in US, Japan and in Europe, is Tools for Grassroots Activists Conference, that is bringing together environmental organizations to learn new tools to grow their impact. The idea started 20 years ago, today, we are organizing the Tools for Grassroots conference on a regular basis to support and grow environmental NGO community. We recently published a book Tools for Grassroots as an extension to the conference. We launched our The New Localism campaigns last year, where we combine sport and environmental community with the main goal of protecting the places we all love and play in. Since then we’ve been touring the world with our ambassadors gaining support for the environmental challenges: from protecting Punta De Lobos in Chile, restoring America’s Greatest Salmon River Snake, protecting Bears Ears, fighting for Jumbo Wild to remain wild in British Columbia, Mile for Mile for Patagonia park conservation efforts. We all have a chance to make a difference and we are offering ways for communities around the world to take a stand.

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Mihela Hladin

< Unstad beach in Lofoten Islands, Norway, March 2016

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58 Basecamp

with Jason Fried

The real problems in our modern offices today are what I like to call the M&Ms, the managers and the meetings. Jason Fried is the co-founder of Basecamp (formerly 37signals), a Chicago-based company he launched in 1999 with Ernest Kim and Carlos Segura. Started as a web design firm, the company moved away from consulting work to web application development. Basecamp was 37signals’ first commercial application, launched in 2004 with partner David Heinemeier Hansson. « That’s our philosophy: Build what we like, and other people will like it, too. »

Words : Elisa Routa Photos : Michael Berger Sources : Ted, 99u, Signalvnoise, Bigthink

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Facebook and Twitter are just modernday smoke breaks.

Famous for his now legendary presentation entitled « Why work doesn’t happen at work», TED speaker Jason Fried is also the co-author of several books, including New York Time’s best sellers « Rework », published in 2010, and « Remote: Office Not Required » launched in 2013, debating the benefits of remote working. « What a company, a charity, or organizations of any kind typically do is that they decide that all these people need to come together and be in one place to do that work. So most people have to go to an office everyday, » explains Fried. « These companies build offices. They go out and they buy a building, they rent a building, or they rent some space and they fill the space with stuff. They fill it with tables or desks, chairs, computer equipment, software, internet access, maybe a fridge, maybe a few other things. And they expect their employees or their volunteers to come to that location everyday to do great work. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask that of people » adds the bestseller author before concluding: « Businesses are spending all this money on a place called ‘the office’, and they’re making people go to it all the time. But people don’t do work in the office. »

According to Fried, because of meetings, interruptions and all kinds of distractions, people prefer to work at home, in a plane, a train, late at night, early in the morning or on weekends. People only have short periods of time to get things done. « Sleep and work are stage-based events. Sleep is about sleep phases. There are 5 of them. If you’re interrupted, you have to start again. So why do we expect people to work well if they’ve been interrupted all day at the office? How can we possibly expect people to do their job if they’re constantly interrupted? At the office, most of the distractions are involuntary. Today, Facebook and Twitter are not interruptions. All those things are just modern-day smoke breaks. These are not the real problem in offices. » The real problems in our modern offices today are what Fried likes to call the M&Ms: The managers and the meetings. « Managers are people whose job is basically to interrupt people. They keep interrupting you at all the wrong times. And meetings are just toxic, terrible, and poisonous things during a day at work. It is an incredibly interruptive thing to do to people. » Fried decided to build a mostly-remote company with about 50 employees spread out across 30 cities around the world. « While we’re mostly based all over the US, we also have people in Canada, the UK, Spain, Germany, Hong Kong and Australia. Move cities, keep your job. » According to Jason Fried, working remotely would increase not only productivity, efficiency, creativity, autonomy, focus but also innovation. Going remote would allow the most talented of people to produce the best work regardless of their location. « As we encourage people to work from anywhere in the world. Twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall — we fly everyone into our headquarters in Chicago for a full-company meetup. The meetups last a full week, Monday through to Friday. » Basecamp’s chief executive, Jason Fried provides a blueprint to change our work habits and is constantly thinking of ways to improve the life of his employees. « We consider our company to be a product too. When you begin to think of your company as a product, you can begin to improve it in entirely new ways. » Basecamp not only offers 3 weeks of paid vacation and a few extra personal days, but also sets up outwork activities in order to favor creativity.

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Condemning traditional corporate office culture and its « under one roof » model of work, Jason Fried doesn’t believe in the 40-hour workweeks and the fact of being confined somewhere for a certain number of hours. « I have no idea how many hours my employees work. I just know they get the work done. » wrote Jason Fried in his Inc.’s Get Real column, also mentioning that creative people need unstructured time to get their work done. « I hate it when businesses treat their employees like children. They block Facebook or YouTube because they want their employees to work eight hours a day. But instead of getting more productivity, you’re getting frustration. What’s the point? As long as the work gets done, I don’t care what people do all day. »

Entrepreneur Jason Fried believes there is real value and beauty in the basics. Thus, he decided to trust his employees by applying a very modern vision of a work environment and of what a company can offer to its employees. Basecamp benefits monitor industry salaries annually to make sure that they are paying their employees in the top 5%, 4-day Summer Work Weeks from May to August, $100/month Fitness Allowance, $100/month Massage Allowance, One-Month Sabbatical every three years, Paid Parental Leave, Health & Dental Insurance, among other benefits. Because friends and family matter, Fried also wants to help restore work-life balance. « We don’t want people working more than 40 hours a week in any sustained fashion (we even built in a “Work Can Wait” feature in Basecamp 3 which turns Basecamp notifications off after work hours and on weekends). In a crisis, or a once-everycouple-of-years special push, we may require very short-term extended hours, but otherwise we strongly encourage a maximum of 40 hours a week, and 8 hours of sleep a night. » Fried also tends to reinvent and renew his agency regularly. « I want my employees to fall madly in love in something. I try to do it every few years at least. This industry is full of creative people but the industry itself is not very creative. » According to Fried, the business in the industry has been done the same way for a long period of time. «The biggest danger I see is complacency, and success breeds complacency. Hunger beats complacency almost every time. We just have to make sure we don’t get too complacent. As long as we’re aware of that, I think we’ll be fine. » To avoid complacency, Jason Fried adopted the now well-known Creative Destruction solution. « What I call Creative Destruction is this idea of finding something that you do, that you’ve made, that you rely on, something that you’re really comfortable with and

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Basecamp

deciding to just blow it up and say: ‘No, I can’t do it that way anymore, that doesn’t make sense anymore’. And the reason why I think it’s really important to make this part of your process is because the easiest thing to become is comfortable and complacent. As your career goes on and as your business grows, if you’re self-employed or if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re gonna find yourself in these moments, where you begin to protect the things that you do, the things that you’ve done, versus destroy those things. The more you protect, the more rigid you become and the harder it becomes to actually do anything real. Complacency and comfort are poison pills for creative minds. »

Within Basecamp, Jason Fried tried to build a new work routine. While the web design industry tends to pitch big projects, with entire re-design, in 2015, Fried decided to focus on one-week long micro projects. He explains more about this refreshing moment. « Long-term projects suck. They’re expensive and they take a long time and there’s so many things to deliver. It’s just so complicated. The reason why long projects aren’t usually fun for you and primarily for the clients is because right from the beginning Complacenof this long process you have a lot of anxiety. People are paying a lot of money for something and they don’t know how long it’s going to take or what they cy and are going to get. That’s the root of the process. » What Basecamp decided comfort are to do is to think about eliminating at each point the uncertainty and risk poison heals around big projects. « So the first thing we did was to say we are not going for the creato do big projects anymore, we are going to do micro projects. Each project that we’ll do will only take one week. We said we’re not gonna do full cycle tive minds. re-design. We’re going to do one page at a time. And we’re not going to charge a lot of money, we’re going to charge $2,500. We’d also eliminate a thing that we hated about client work which was feedbacks. So we were simply delivering the work on Friday and that was that. If they wanted another revision, they could buy another revision. If they wanted another page done, they could buy another page. It was a chance for us to prove we were good. It was a chance to be conformable with the client. It was a chance for the client to get comfortable with the process. And it was a chance for them to also think about the value of the work that we were doing. »

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Modern workplaces, less focused hours, remote workers, less restrictions, more freedom and respect for people. In every one of his talks, Fried wonders how work really works in the modern age, providing a radical theory of working. “When there’s a forced change in the way you work on a regular basis, you create moments to look at something fresh,” he says. “If you begin to do that, you will see it a little bit differently and you have a chance at making a change.”

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03/

PLAYGROUND /

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Active Community The Sea Kin by Lauren L. Hill LuftgekĂźhlt with Patrick Long

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66 The Sea kin Camaraderie, Community, Environment, Feminism and Diversity

Words : Olivier Hamelin Photos : Ming Nomchong / The archipelago of Tonga

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« The women are very dexterous at this sport; and Iddeah, the queen-mother, is considered the most expert in the whole island. » wrote the newly arrived English missionary John williams about Tahitian surfers. More than two centuries later, the place of a woman in the surf industry remains pretty controversial, sometimes painted with great strokes of archaic stereotypes. We wanted to have a little chat with Lauren L. Hill, one of the most engaged surfers of our generation in terms of environmental and social issues. With her «Sea Kin» initiative, Lauren has gathered around herself a true community of creative surfers who are in love with change. Described by the founder as a true platform, sharing not only ideas & stories but also a whole imagery related to surfing, The Sea Kin is the gateway to a more global, richer and truly more inclusive culture. We sent our contributor Olivier Hamelin off to meet her and to discuss certain subjects with her such as the representation of women in the surf industry, the respect and celebration of diversity and the depolarization of gender against an environmental background. Everywhere you looked were walking bodies. Alone. All unique and all alone. Perhaps they seemed more alone to me than they ever had before under that insidious rain which infiltrated their skin. Paris was busy living, the two worlds collided without acknowledging each other and never the twain shall meet. All these bodies, busy doing their own thing, all

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alone. They looked each other up and down without ever really touching, too concerned about the idea of another lonely night, too lost in the animality of their own flesh. No interactions. No solicitude. No time. Yes, everywhere, bodies full of listless lives, unfulfilled, living side by side, blithely emaciated, lying on pavements drenched in urine and decay, while these other naked hyper-sexualized bodies, emblems of a perfection that we so desire were everywhere to be seen, placarded on advertising billboards on the walls of the city. Everywhere was this contrast, disconcerting and almost sickening. So worn out, I often fled Paris for the wild coasts of the Atlantic. I told myself that everything was simpler over there, living by the ocean, hiding inside rolls of throbbing waves that crash onto the beaches, making me forget about everything. Over there, I would lose myself in my favorite outlet, surfing, a sport established in a culture where everything seemed easier and more beautiful, with all its clichés and its realities. I loved it for all that it represented; freedom, self-abnegation, and self-transcendence. Yes, I have often left Paris to go live on the Atlantic coast and yet I have always returned to the city. Who knows why. Everywhere I go, I see bodies jostling into each

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Playground

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The Sea Kin other on the Parisian sidewalks, girls getting sexually harassed, beggars reaping nothing but ignorance and contempt and nobody does anything about it, which brings me to the conclusion that it’s too easy to simply stand back and make observations or to complain. So I thought to myself that maybe now it was time to act. Become consciously aware of the dysfunctions of society and simply act. React. And yet nobody moves. Starting with myself. The feeling of helplessness and emptiness is suffocating. It seizes your whole body and paralyzes you sometimes. And then, as if it was a sign, the phone rings again, but this time it’s Swenson Magazine who asks me to go interview Lauren Hill, a professional surfer, activist, environmentalist and feminist, who has been fighting for some years now to gather people around herself and her project The Sea Kin, a community of surfers, men & women, ready to rebuild the concept of ‘living together’ once again. I smiled. This phone call had come just at the right time, a touch of providential hope. Given the mediocre state of mind in which I was in, I was more than happy to go talk with this young American surfer girl with multiple skills. So many things to defend, so many words and so little room on paper. I wrote to Lauren Hill, full of new enthusiasm. Firstly, I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine her out there in a jungle somewhere in Sri Lanka, where she was shooting a film. Imagine her curled up in a ball in front of her computer, between two wild adventures. She set the tone of our conversation straight away with these words:

«Floating on the Indian Ocean well before the sun had risen, and then seeing each increment of the big bright make its way over the horizon to reflect dusky golden hues all around me. The colors of everything – the sunrise, the waves – are just unique to that island. And the surf, the food, wildlife, the incredible resilient communities: it’s a beautiful country with so much to teach us.»

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As changes of scenery go, I was already sold. So I proceeded to enter the heart of the matter: Lauren, her story and her community project, The Sea Kin. Let’s go back to the beginning. For Lauren, everything started on an island somewhere off Florida. She grew up with a surfboard under her feet, the ocean was her playground. She quickly became passionate about this universe which, in addition to being a sport, is also a language, a culture in its own right. Only that’s the problem, she can’t seem to find her place in this highly masculine universe and quickly uncovered the major stakes and the societal problems that were hidden by this community. She therefore decided to make it a subject of study.

«I surfed competitively for 6 or 7 years and won the U.S. women’s longboard title in the early 2000s. I quit competing to go to university, but I’d also reached a point where I wasn’t really having much fun competing anymore. While pursuing degrees in environmental and social science, I started writing a thesis on the intersections of surfing, environmentalism and gender issues. When I graduated, I cut my hair all short and professional and was ready to work with an environmental NGO in either Washington D.C. or New York. Thanks to the Global Financial Crisis, I couldn’t get a job after graduating from university, which ended up being the most unexpected blessing.» One of the biggest problems we encounter nowadays is that people have become comfortable in their own ignorance, lacking thoughts of reality and many who contribute to different causes do it half heartedly to appease their conscience. It was then that Lauren Hill’s life took a completely different turn. She who at a very young age thanks to sport developed a very strong taste for commitment and combativity and decided to use this inner strength to defend as closely as possible the themes developed in her thesis. She now manages to live from her free surfing practice by multiplying projects with different brands. And, above all, she’s

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Playground become an activist, gathering a community around herself who not only respects the environment but who also respects a women’s place in society. Gender equality and respect for the environment: the bridge between the two themes may seem hazardous at first sight, yet these are two major subjects which allow us to judge the progress of society, or so we are told. As well as that, I also came to realize that the two are intimately linked because they are part of the same project, the same model of society, in which individual behavior towards the acceptance of diversity and the respect for the environment around us must be encouraged. Lauren understands this concept only too well. It has become a personal mission of her’s and after having escaped bureaucracy, with all its delays and disillusions, it seemed logical that she could, via surfing and all that it represents, continue her fight and this thanks to a tool that has become high-powered and inescapable: the illustrious and controversial Internet.

«Eight years ago, I started a blog, Mersea Beaucoup, that addressed the same themes as my thesis and started working my way back into surf culture from there, partnering with brands and writing. I guess it started because I didn’t really see my experience of surfing in any of the surf media that was around at the time; it all catered to a very narrow audience that often excluded women’s perspectives. So I wanted to create a vision of surf culture as I see it. My initial blog Mersea Beaucoup eventually turned into The Sea Kin, which became a ‘zine and is now an Instagram community. So The Sea Kin is about creating culture for ourselves. I wanted a place to read about surf culture as I want it to be: about camaraderie, community, environment and respecting diversity. So I started to create a small digital space for that to happen.

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And now I work as an ambassador for brands like Billbong, Sanuk and Bing Surfboards, bringing those same themes to light via writing, photography, art and film.» Talented? That she is, no doubt about it. Talented and lucid on one hand namely, the propensity that the surfing culture has to possess within it most of the stakes of the development of our society. Who would’ve believed it? For a long time now, environmental causes have been seen by the entire surfing community as something obvious and as far as the place and the ridiculed image of women are concerned, whilst the awareness is much more recent, it has nevertheless become a major issue. It is, moreover, a very interesting phenomenon to study so I decided to approach the subject with Lauren. While in some countries, such as Iran and Bangladesh, surfing has been able to help women’s emancipation through isolated initiatives, in Western countries, a contrario, surfing has become a culture in its own right which has unfortunately perfectly assimilated the inequalities of the two sexes to exacerbate them. Surfing: vector of freedom for women on one hand and degradation on the other? Lauren, who knows the subject well, quickly explained the phenomenon to me and then, little by little, she entered the heart of a subject that is clearly dear to her. «There’s an important distinction to be made here: the act of surfing vs. the culture of surfing. The act of surfing is deeply personal and has the potential to liberate, inspire, connect. And we’ve seen that

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The Sea Kin foundations of our patriarchal society, but sometimes it is just as effective, in order to reach consciousness, to approach the subject concisely in a clear-sighted manner, as Lauren does. And if I speak of being clearsighted, where many will simply talk about feminism in a sectarian and spectacular manner, Lauren goes that bit further, which is where her strength lies. Her vision is broader. Less provocative. More comprehensive than that currently conveyed by the traditional media and by certain activist groups that are way too mediatized.

happen in unexpected places all over the planet. The culture of surfing, however, is a different story. It means lots of different things to different people, but it largely carries the stories of the people in power.» « Our surfing population is estimated to be about 70% male. Naturally, because they make up the majority, men have created much of what we know as surfing culture. Depictions of women in the surf industry really aren’t any different from depictions of women in mainstream media. That is, as pretty accessories, or dehumanized, hypersexualized body parts detached from being a whole human. It’s just so boring. And when you look at the research, this kind of portrayal of women significantly contributes to rampant issues like rape and sexual harassment. People start believing what they see. In the case of mainstream media, women are continuously portrayed as objects that exist for the primary purpose of satisfying men’s sexual desires. So people continue acting out those ideas in real life. » The words are strong and leave little room for doubt: Lauren knows exactly what she’s talking about and where she’s going with it. And when, already convinced, I ask her all the same, if she considers herself a feminist, her answer is firm and thoughtful: «Completely.» The word is without concession, as should be the position of everyone about this major problem in society. Because yes, it is sad to have to repeat it over & over again, but the equality of the sexes in the so-called «western» countries is far from being reality. And you can never remind people too much about it. So sure, it would take pages and pages to really deal with the subject and to go back to the roots and reasons of the gangrene, as well as the dark

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« For me, feminism means working toward equal opportunity for all, no matter your race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. In a patriarchal culture, the first step in that process necessitates recognizing the importance of femininity, for women and men. » « There’s this notion that ‘gender’ or feminism only has to do with rectifying “women’s” issues, but I know that men suffer as much as women do as a result from the very narrow definitions of manhood and masculinity in this country. How are we going to have a peaceful planet if we don’t have peaceful homes? If one in three women are being abused by family members, and domestic violence is very obviously about power, control and domination, what kind of foundation is that for creating a world where those same destructive traits aren’t the reigning qualities?» «Actually, I feel really strongly that de-polarizing gender and celebrating diversity is a crucial thread in unraveling lots of social and environmental issues. » That’s right, Lauren Hill doesn’t mince her words and one can not blame her - whether we adhere to her ideas or not - she strikes with reflection and passion in the heart of burning subjects. She opens the debate and you just have to visit the website of The Sea Kin to realize the intelligence and the aesthetics with which the subjects are treated. Lauren, along with her companion Dave Rastovich - an activist surfer who is well known in the environmental sphere - has brought together a true community of creative surfers who are in love with change. So much so that on The Sea Kin, one speaks as well history, that activism, travel, culture, art, feminism and environment, without never too far away from the surf. Lauren knows how to use media tools to her advantage and this is what makes it easier for her to reach an audience who are not necessarily part of the surfing world. That is an essential point when advocating causes that concern everyone: knowing how to give universal dimension to a battle, however personal and targeted.

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«It’s not enough to complain about the wrongs. We can make change by creating our own cultural contributions; make a ‘zine, start a blog, write a story for a magazine, take photos, tell your story. My feeling, though, is that the media is a neutral force, like money, that can be used for good or used for evil. I feel strongly that media imagery is powerful. And that we have a responsibility to create positive, empowering alternatives to the overwhelmingly negative, unrealistic or irresponsible imagery that bombards us via mainstream and social media.» Media. The word is on the tips of everyone’s tongue. On Lauren’s, on mine, on yours. Responsible for all the evils or eulogies of the revolution to come, the media are of significance and play an important part of this dictate of the image that we have to endure. If there has to be change, it will undoubtedly pass through them, be it in the surf industry or in any other world. It is not the only key to change. I find it admirable and comforting that an activist like Lauren Hill, who has so many different projects underway, such as the Sea Kin, hasn’t lost sight of her values.

There’s more than just surfing in Lauren Hill’s universe. There’s a whole new approach on how to live together, the vision of a new model of society that can only be a source of reflection for all. Whether you’re a wave lover or not. And whilst sending a final email to the her to thank her for having answered all my questions, I suddenly become fully aware of the impact that this conversation has had on me. The solitude of the bodies on the Parisian pavements that I see everyday suddenly seem more abstract to me, more distant. Before closing our exchange, Lauren Hill evokes the future. And isn’t that just how it all should conclude? She tells me about her next project and hits the nail on the head one last time: «I’m currently working on a short film called Pear Shaped. It’s a bit of a parody of the hyper-sexualisation of women’s surfing. Surfing culture tends to take itself pretty seriously. And women’s surfing carries the extra burden of not only having to be serious, but also be sexy. I wanted to poke fun at all that with a little absurdity from the everyday realities of being a woman in the water: rogue tampon strings, snot face, wardrobe malfunctions, etc... So, Pear Shaped is a tip of the cap to the people who shrug off the unique challenges of surfing and choose to go anyway.»

«The media can be an agent for suggesting alternatives or change, but I feel like face-to-face dialogue, com- Go there, whatever happens. Whatever the opinions of munity involvement and humanizing others. Choose change. The task seems arduous, but why not other people’s reality is what will ultima- start on this scale and try to just learn how to reach out to others but also learn when to say no? Lauren Hill is right to tely change us in deep and meaningful open the debate and as she returns to her Sri Lankan jungle, ways. Radical change almost always I catch myself thinking of all those bodies hustling down happens from the bottom- up. This the sidewalks, crowding the underground platforms and can be as simple as gathering around the beaches, everywhere. All these bodies, all alone. Never united. But now something has changed. I begin to see, in our a dinner table with a diverse group of immense solitude, a great possibility of a new start. friends, choosing a potentially stirring topic, letting everyone speak their own experience on the matter, and encouraging everyone to really listen instead of formulating objections or rebuttals. The key finally here is to respect diversity. To love and be loved. To be honest. To be part of a resilient community. To live as part of a thriving ecology. And to continue to learn new skills and to grow.»

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The Sea Kin

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74 Luftgekühlt

with Patrick Long

We wanted to break down all the walls between exclusivity, outlaws and regular car people. In 2014, a Porsche factory racing driver, professional racing driver and two-time American Le Mans Series GT2 driver champion Patrick Long partnered with creative director Howie Idelson to create the ultimate happening for air-cooled Porsches. Their first event gathered about 40 cars at Deus headquarters in Los Angeles. The second annual Luftgekühlt (German for air-cooled, such as those in vintage aircooled Porsche motors) took place at Bandito Brothers, a production company based in Culver City. For the third edition, more than 400 owners drove down to Modernica’s industrial park in Vernon, just south of downtown L.A. The crowd is getting bigger & bigger every year and includes famous Porsche lovers such as Jeff Zwart, Jerry Seinfeld, Magnus Walker, Patrick Dempsey, Spike Feresten, Rod Emory and many others. In just three years, Luftgekühlt has become one of the Porsche world’s coolest car shows and has managed to address all different types of Porsche products and owners. We met Patrick Long to find out more about his idea of a successful business and the importance of passion, collaboration and diversity.

> - >> Deus Ex Machina’s 2014 Luftgekühlt Porsche event in Venice, CA

Interview & words : Elisa Routa Photos : Deus Ex Machina, Thomas Walk, Nevin Pontious

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Playground Let’s go back to the origins of Luftgekühlt… I grew up in southern California in a sort of surf, skate, snow culture, but I have always had a real love for motorsports and so did my family. It was a sort of bridge between my two worlds. I’d been employed by Porsche for 15 years and through all of my travels with Porsche, as well as when I was a kid, I’d been to many, many different car events. I had, I guess, an urge to do a little bit of a different spin on a couple of things that have been close to my daily routine. One being sort of a Southern Californian artistic surrounding and the other being the very traditional and conservative vintage Porsche world. So I found myself expecting more from some the other shows that I was attending.

We’re just bridging two worlds that were very close to both of our lives.

You are a professional racing driver, your partner Howie Idelson is a creative director. How did you end up working with Howie? We met over 25 years ago in karting. Howie was a pioneer and a total legend in the eyes of a 10-year old boy like me. He was fast, he raced in the US but also in Europe. He had a real eye for design and he brought so many new elements of design to the otherwise very traditional karting world. So, a few years ago, Howie and I were collaborating on a racing shoe. He was the designer and I was the practical one and we were both friends. Every time we went to a meeting, he’d ask me ‘What’s that car you’re driving?’ I would tell him about the world that I lived in, about my love of the vintage Porsche culture and I told him ‘You know, one day I’m gonna have the nerve to try and create a show my way’. And he said ‘Let’s do it, let’s go right now!’ So that was in the summer of 2014 and our first show was in September of 2014 at Deus. And the rest is history. You are a Porsche factory driver, professional racing driver and a multi-time Le Mans winner. Did you feel you needed to take up new challenges and set new goals? Yeah, I mean, it’s in my nature to do so. And it’s in Howie’s nature to create. But really, what we were doing was just bridging two worlds that were very close to both of our lifestyles. We both have a circle of friends who are into other things than motor sports, be it in cinematography, design, art or music. And on the other hand, we both participate in the car culture in our own ways and there’s so much crossover between those two worlds, as you know. It was really for fun and I think we knew right away that we needed to take it seriously because we had a suspicion that it could become popular pretty quick. So we definitely put a lot of thought into the name and the collaboration with Carby Tuckwell from Deus on the art. Then, the real strength was tapping into my relationships in the car world and trying to bring out a very diverse collection of Porsche air-cooled cars. It wasn’t only one type of car, it was really to tell a story: what I longed to do was to create a small gallery of cars that I could introduce to non-enthusiasts in the world of air-cooled Porsches. I had this vision in my mind, of walking them around a small parking lot and explaining to them visually each sort of sector of the air-cooled Porsche enthusiasm that is all around the world and especially in Southern California.

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77 It seems you want to avoid the traditional Porsche-gathering stereotypes and want to break down that stigma. How would you describe the uniqueness of Luftgekühlt compared to other car events? Our first ambition was really to tell a story to a non-car person. Often, I would have two or three people standing and looking at one of my cars when I came out of a restaurant and they would have a lot of questions and I realized that they were quite passionate about this car. But they didn’t really have the tools to learn more about them. So that was my number one priority, information. My second priority was to organize a car show for myself and for Howie, the way we wanted it to be. And then, I think what has been the most fun - and the thing I hope leaves an impression on the car culture after we’ve finished this - is bringing many different types of people together and I mean that from a car point of view. Often, when you go to a car show, you have a very singular style and for us, we wanted to break down all the walls between exclusivity, outlaws and regular car people. We wanted to make it a very open and welcoming show where everybody felt that their car was receiving equally special treatment rather than sometimes not being able to have your car displayed because it doesn’t have the correct value or the original color or whatever. We wanted to truly celebrate the passion and the people behind the cars. There’s definitely a rich diversity of people coming to your shows. It seems you want to include and involve everyone. How would you define the community interested in your events? First of all, it is a community of highly educated, legendary and accomplished people in the world of Porsches. Then you have a whole other world who’s completely accomplished in their own right, or interested in owning a vintage Porsche or who just wants to have a nice social morning or afternoon with their child, their wife and their dog. It needed to be something where there was good

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Luftgekühlt energy with music, art, food and cars. There’s not really one particular type of person at our show and that’s always been our main goal. The goal was to be able to share a beer with a celebrity who wasn’t being treated or acting like a celebrity, someone who was there because they wanted to be. I think there’s a lot of things that bring people together from many different worlds, religions and sport teams. And with Porsche, you have such a following of loyal enthusiasts.

The first venue was at Deus Headquarters in L.A., the Australian surf and motorcycle brand, then you went to Bandito Brothers. In 2016, you managed to gather more than 400 Porche owners at Modernica, how do you explain such a success? I think it’s successful because we have many influencers and friends of ours who have honestly portrayed our show in the way it makes them feel. I think we prefer to let other people tell our story rather than to tell the story ourselves. So I think that the fast rise is thanks to associations and relationships with friends, who have a much stronger voice than we do. I think it’s also been through collaborations with partners who are not standard car people. Deus, Bandito Brothers or Modernica, they all have a love for cars but they all do business in different sectors, different industries. And this has always been a strict criteria of ours, maybe one that has pushed boundaries a little bit by taking a myth and moving it away from a traditional parking lot or automotive related venue. We never went into this with the ambition of making money. It was more a movement, just doing what we love and creating a car show that non-car people would enjoy. So, basically, do you build the show around the venue? Yes, the mix is always to be considered so we end up with more of an experience than an event. For that to be a priority, you have to introduce people to a different world and let them discover and learn something new. For us, it’s

really easy to use the venue as a catalyst for direction in design, in size, in date. But also, when we align with a brand who has similarities with ours but comes from a different world, it allows them to introduce their loyal followers to Luftgekühlt and for Luftgekühlt to introduce people in the car world who may be very car-centric and not always connected with other hobbies. It’s been great to introduce so many car people to the Deus brand, which I learned about and fell in love with in 2011 when I was racing in Australia. The Bandito Brothers, Howie and I met them through our normal jobs. Modernica was through a mutual friend and the owner Jay (Novak) is a real artist but also a massive car enthusiast. So, I think that’s been one of our strong points, but we’ve never shied away from being open about this. We’ve seen that the next generation is doing the same thing we did and are applying it to their own shows. It’s quite flattering when you think about it. In the beginning, it was a little bit of a shock but we realized that at the end of the day this is all about inspiring people. So if they decide to do something very similar in their own market, we have to be proud of this.

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Playground Simplicity, community, passion and creativity are at the heart of the brand. How will you manage to protect this DNA in the future? It’s really a simple formula that people in all different businesses, in branding and in creativity are faced with. I’m really fortunate to be surrounded by creatives myself because I’m not exactly an artistic person. I consider myself passionate about vision and strategy, but I can’t draw, I can’t design and that’s why Howie really comforts me and allows me to embrace that people may copy what you’re doing. Just continue to push forward and unlock the new ideas we have rather than worrying about what may or may not be influencing what other people do. That gives me comfort because we feel like we’re just getting started, we have so many ideas, so many collaborations, so many alternative markets that we plan to go with. The biggest thing for us is just finding the time, we are so busy with our families and our own full-time jobs that we don’t have a tremendous amount of time. This is really a side project for us. But I think that maybe some of our success is that we don’t take ourselves seriously and we don’t put unnecessary pressure on the show. If you come to one of our shows, you’ll realize that it has a pretty cool vibe to it. We try not to have strict order and sometimes it’s a little bit crazy but it comes back to what really excites us about going to an event, whether it’s a music festival or a race, or an art show, it’s the lead up and the excitement of the upcoming event that counts. So we try to continue to have fun with the pre-event communication, the pre-event events and dinners to help build up the event in a non-traditional way. Sometimes, the consumer is tired of traditional branding. So we tried to go back to doing what we liked doing and not what people told us that we should do if we wanted to be successful.

> Luftgekühlt at Modernica, 2016

You mentioned your desire to unlock new ideas in the future, are you going to expand the event in Europe? Yes, we’ve had some good meetings and lots of great ideas. We just want to make sure when we do it that it’s right. In the meantime, we’ll continue to just try and collaborate. One thing we have to be clear on is that we cannot take the credit for the entire event, we don’t show up and rent a venue and create an event. We collaborate with the host and we collaborate with our products. Anything we do is in collaboration and partnership with other brands. We only do an event when it’s ready and when it feels right. Some people have advised us that we need to move quicker, we need to be bigger, we need to be better. And we love listening to everyone who advises us, especially people who’ve been successful in this area, but we started out as friends and we’re gonna leave as friends – that is our number one priority. The rest will all fall into place by itself.

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Luftgekühlt

So does it mean you see the development and growing of the brand more naturally and organically? There are a lot of things we want to do, a lot of companies we want to work with and a lot of markets we want to visit, but we just want all this to take its own course. And I guess a lot of your readers will have that same theory in their start-up. I think other people will shake their heads and think “that’s a big mistake,” but at the end of the day, I think we just have to do what feels right. That’s why we’re taking our time. But I’ll be honest with you, we’re flat out. I mean, I travel over 200 days a year, I have a young family and Howie is very sought after as a designer. So we’re always trying to keep a balance between everything. But the good thing is that in Europe and Asia, where we want to go soon, we have great contacts who have come to our shows already. So, I’d say Europe and Asia are just around the corner, but we like leaving a little to the imagination, you’ve gotta stay a bit mysterious!

> Howie Idelson & Patrick Long

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Playground

1985 911 Carrera Coupe at Modernica, 2016

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Colin Tunstall

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04/

MANNERS/

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Entrepreneurs’ backpacks

Ryan Kingman, «The self-made man» Why You Should Build A Small Business — Not A Start-up

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84 A self-made man The story of Ryan Kingman by Ryan Kingman

Interview : Fabrice Le Mao Photos : Max Buchanan

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After almost 12 years as Director of Global Marketing at Element, Ryan Kingman cofounded Stance socks, one of the most popular sock and underwear brands. In early 2010, with skateboarding as an organic part of the brand, Kingman pioneered a new approach to sock manufacturing. Developing the company’s commitment to expression and growing the brand from zero to $70 million in six years, Kingman explored his entrepreneurial spirit. As Stance’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kingman collaborated with artists like Wu Tang Clan and his socks got to be on Rihanna and NBA players’ feet. Fabrice Le Mao met him in California to discuss leadership, selfishness, creative stimulation and challenges. I was born in New York City but moved to Seattle a couple of years later. My father was born and raised in Hawaii so we ended up moving there. Eventually my parents separated and my mother returned to Seattle. I split my time between both. I had a circle of good friends in both cities. My buddies in Seattle were Scott Smiley and Mark Hubbard (Grindline Skateparks). In Hawaii, I was friends with Mark Oblow, Pat Myers, Vince Krause and a handful of other Hawaiian greats. My parents saw that I really loved skateboarding so my father got me a Sims Hosoi Rising Sun with Gullwings Trucks and B-52’s wheels.

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Manners The funny thing is that, at first, he tried to use it as a leverage to see if my grades would improve at school but, eventually, he felt sorry for me and just gave it to me. I was a terrible student. That’s also when I got my first Thrasher Magazine. It was Stevie Caballero in a pool on the cover. “Bad Brains” and “Steel Pulse” was spray painted on the walls of the pool in the picture. My mother went to Fallout Records & Skateboards in Seattle and bought Bad Brains’ “Rock For Light” and Steel Pulse’s “True Democracy.” That little chain of events right there changed my trajectory for ever. I never did well at school. I got kicked out of two schools and almost didn’t graduate. Mark Oblow and I were joined at the hip back then. All we wanted to do was skate so we told our respective parents that we would go to Santa Monica College, Mark for Photography and me for History and Philosophy and although we made sure they believed they were contributing to our educational development, we ultimately didn’t give a shit about school. The Oblow family moved to LA near Venice. I joined them shortly after. They let me live in their storage room they had in their condo with no heater and no electricity and a bunch of boxes. But that was all I needed back then. Eventually I got to move into the condo. Mark Oblow was always very resourceful. He was working team manager’s jobs long before me. He would always hook me up with jobs wherever he worked. That was the case when he got hired by Marty Jimenez and Jim Gray who were starting Channel One and Acme. That was my first job. My first day at work was to peel off the plastic paper off of the slick bottoms. They said: “Hey, we’re going to give you 20 bucks to peel the plastic paper off of the boards.” I couldn’t believe that I was going to get money to work in skateboarding! It was a dream! (Laughs). That eventually turned into a: “You’re cool. You’re smart. Why don’t you organize the warehouse and deal with the shipping for us?” That was the first time I realized that hard work equals reward. I had a hard time balancing work, life, partying and skateboarding. Partying eventually took over and I thought the best thing for me would be a change of environment so I moved back to Hawaii. Well, as could be assumed the environment was not what needed changing, it was me. So once again I reached out to my dear friend Mark Oblow to help me out. He offered me a spot on his couch and a job. Mark had two roommates at the time, Johnny Schillereff, who had started a board company called Element, and Kyle Yanagimoto, another longtime Hawaiian friend. Mark once again looked out for me and got me a

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job as a “videotape duplicator” at 411VM. Soon after, Mark started a screen printing company called Indian Ink. They were screen printing boards for all the best board companies at the time, so…he got me a job at Indian Ink! That’s when something shifted for me. I remember this vividly: backed by my experience at Channel One/Acme warehouse, I took it upon myself to install a little work station composed of a little desk, a chair and hammered nails on the wall to hang some clipboards so I could organize the inventory. I remember Mike Pust, who was working with Paul Schmitt at that time (running PS Stix) coming in and being impressed with my (rather basic) organizational skills. So they gave me the job of managing the production process. At some point along the way Oblow started Vita Shoes with a That was the guy named Lance Theis. Lance had first time I reapreviously started a shoe company lized that hard called Duffs years prior and had a lot of footwear knowledge. As I work equals always did, I followed Mark in that reward. venture as well. We spent a lot of time conceptualizing what the brand could be. Mark brought Natas Kaupas in. (It was after he was done with Etnies-NDR). I knew Natas from when he used to come to Hawaii. I was fortunate to witness the start-up business process alongside these greats. My job was to manage the office operations and sales. It was fun but challenging…yet I came to the realization that I didn’t like to cold call skate shops and try to sell them shoes. I probably wasn’t very good at it either. I’ll be forever grateful to Mark for all the mentorship, guidance and support he provided from back then to today. If it were not for him, you would not be reading this. At the same time my friend Dan Wolfe was making a career transition, he was team manager at Giant Skateboard Distribution. Johnny Schillereff offered me to take over the team manager position at Giant Skateboards, home to Element, Black Label, New Deal, Destructo, 411VM and a few other brands. I was in a tough spot as I wanted a job change but I also felt a massive amount of loyalty to Mark. It was my “dream” job as I’d seen Mark do it for half my life…and Johnny had a mentor appeal to me. I made the tough decision to change paths. I simply wanted to improve my life and make a little more money doing something exciting while challenging myself to grow. I had to get out of my comfort zone and step up as a person. And I wanted to travel. I made the Giant team my priority in life and Johnny Schillereff was an incredible mentor along the way. For the first time, I started to have a vision of what my life could be. I could make decent money while excelling at my career.

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Ryan Kingman

From the outside, entrepreneurship may seem to be an individualistic adventure when, in fact, a true entrepreneur is somebody who will reach out to those around them, gather a tight team around him/her.

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Manners Element kept on growing (within Giant) and Johnny decided that we should move the creative departments to LA. That’s when I started considering myself as “the marketing guy”. I got to hire some help and it was the first in my life that I had to represent myself in a more professional capacity. It was in 1999 and I was 28. Under Johnny’s advice I started writing goals for myself. It worked really well for me. There is something about writing down your goals that makes the Universe help you work towards that. I really do believe so. It may be something in your subconscious –and consciousness– that make you relentlessly work towards it. It sets a path.

negotiating the contracts, negotiating advertising, booking the trips, traveling with the team, dealing with video stuff… I do what he does. He’s a Marketing Director? I’m a Marketing Director! It was the first time I realized that a title meant anything.

I had no idea what real marketing strategy consisted of so I read a couple of books about it, and asked a lot of friends. I didn’t know what “endemic” meant. I didn’t know how to read a PNL. I’d never built a budget. It was baptism by fire. I learned quickly; marketing budget, in-store and POP, GTM strategy and sales meeting presentations. On “There’s this more than one occasion I acted as though Around that time, Johnny and the new start-up. I knew what I was doing or talking about founders at Giant were starting to work but to be honest, I didn’t… but I made They heard sure that I learned what I needed to learn on creating an opportunity that would about you and and then some. I remembered then what allow Element to realize it’s greater potential. In the end this realization they want to my dad told me: “You’re stubborn. You meant an acquisition of Element by you know everything. But you’re meet you.” I think Billabong. I wasn’t intimately involved going to have to learn what you don’t was flattered. know the hard way.” And, sure enough, with the deal but through my relationship with the founders I was able to glean a “Cool! What’s I did. I didn’t have a college education few things about a business transaction the brand?” but I knew how to learn… And I loved of this nature. I learned about the I had this epiphany about myself that He said: “It’s it. components of an acquisition. It was the I really want to show people that they a sock brand.” were right in believing in me. In order to first time I’d heard of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and I paused… for do this, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I Amortization) and my first exposure to what probably put myself in predicaments that probably the more advanced executive side of the lot of people would have shied away seemed like afrom. business. I think that part of it comes from and awkwardly skateboarding. You put yourself into A publicly owned surf brand acquiring long time. situations where you are going to get hurt a skateboard brand… as far as I can but you pass through the pain and learn. remember, a first in the skate industry. There were Is it pride, stubbornness or stupidity? I don’t know but positives and negatives. The brand caught a lot of heat I figured it out. and I was in the middle of it. Johnny had his ambitions for growth and the team riders had expectations for After that acquisition storm, when the company their own career development. At that time, surfers was starting to pick up momentum, I noticed that were really well compensated in comparison to in a corporate structure there is a clear delineation skateboarders, who unfortunately were not so much. between the different structural layers of business We had aspirations to change that and compensate structure and responsibilities. This identification of our guys on a similar level. But first we had to build ‘corporate culture’ really helped me catalyze what the brand. There was a lot of blowback from media career development was and could look like. At the and certain parts of the industry. I felt like I had to same time I hit the ‘corporate ceiling’ at Element manage everybody’s expectations in a realistic way and my vision of what a skateboard company should while launching Element Apparel. be didn’t align with those that were ultimately in charge determining the direction of the Element Once the acquisition took place and the dust settled brand. During that same time, my relationship with there were three people that came over to the new Johnny had slowly changed. He and I were evolving Element; Johnny (President), Matt Irving (newly hired professionally, in different directions. Not for better Art Director) and myself. Billabong asked me what I or for worse, just different. It definitely changed our wanted my job tittle to be. I looked at what my friend Enich was doing (Billabong Marketing Director) :

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Ryan Kingman dynamic. I started to get frustrated. At the same time, I was presented with a new opportunity by a friend of mine who called me while I was driving with my dear friend and Element team manager, Ryan DeWitt, saying: “There’s this new start-up. They heard about you and they want to meet you.” I was flattered. “Cool! What’s the brand?” He said: “It’s a sock brand.” I paused…for what probably seemed like and awkwardly long time. “Socks?” I said. During the remaining 15 minutes of my drive to the TransWorld office I processed my thoughts around it. By the time I arrived, I was fired up on the prospect of a sock brand.

you bounce ideas around with… You need motivation. An entrepreneur ensures they are always surrounded with the right people.

I feel I learned true leadership at Stance. What it meant to guide, inspire and motivate. To encourage yet push. Upon my departure from Stance, I had 18 people on my team. My role had changed a lot and in the end my job was to help them do their work, to guide their own career development and discovery. It’s a unique shift in leadership when your role evolves to becoming the servant of your team. It’s somewhat liberating. It becomes about showing people how they can improve themselves along the way. Our idea at John Wilson (one of the other 4 Stance I have had so many people helping me Stance was to founders) and I jumped on a call and along the way, it was an incredible feeling I remember we just hit it if off. I could bring a disrupto be able to help someone else. see that he had a vision and I could be tive, new vision a part of it. It was scary because it was a for what a sock In my desire to grow both personally and new market, with people I didn’t know I took on the opportunity brand could be. professionally, and had no history with. For the first of launching of a coconut water company time ever, I was on my own: no Mark called Villager Goods. The product Oblow, no Johnny Schillereff to hold my hand and should be in stores now…but without me as a part of guide me down the path. They asked me: “Hey, there the brand. Our respective differences led to a parting are a few people interested in the position, we would of ways and I’m no longer with the brand. There were like to see a plan… What would you do if you got this some invaluable lessons learned along the way, which job?” I worked on that strategy deck describing what I I will learn and grow from… often times this sort of would do to launch and sustain a sock business. It was transition is what really tempers personal growth. challenging and fun… I did it with confidence, some arrogance even (laughing) because I truly believed in I’ve been blessed to experience entrepreneurship what I could do for them. in may different forms through many different types of people. I know now what it means to be an Our idea at Stance was to bring a disruptive, new entrepreneur and I’ve seen what it takes to get there. vision for what a sock brand could be. We weren’t It’s scary, challenging and rewarding. Regardless of the first sock brand but we were determined to be the monetary success, there are so many incredible things one that made the biggest impact. We approached you learn about yourself and others, for better or for all disciplines that we represented with the same worse, when you get out of your comfort zone and attitude. My stance (so to speak) was: “How do we push yourself to take risks. I love the idea of creating (skateboarders, surfers and snowboarders) infiltrate something from nothing or taking something and these other environments, these non-endemic evolving it, pushing it forward. Being an intricate part cultures in a way that is new and disruptive, that of that exciting environment. they haven’t seen before? Let’s get in there and let’s do something unique and different and disruptive.” I’m still in love with Stance, I’m usually there 3 or That’s how we saw it. That was our approach. My 4 days a week, using the gym or meeting up with partners entrusted me to craft the initial vision and friends. I’m on the advisory board but have no voice, then from there we did everything together. ongoing involvement in day to day business. Beyond Stance was a place where I felt that my personal voice that I’m not sure what’s next for me but I truly enjoy and opinion truly mattered. creative stimulation. I often say I like to be challenged. It’s fun to say: “I love challenges” until you’re actually From the outside, entrepreneurship may seem to challenged, then those challenges aren’t so sexy. But be an individualistic adventure when, in fact, a true that’s where you learn, where you grow. Inevitably, entrepreneur is somebody who will reach out to those you’re intellectual curiosity kicks in and pushes you around them, gather a tight team around him/her. down the path of uncertainty… You have to have mentors, business partners, people

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Manners

Why You Should Build A Small Business — Not A Start-up Words : Jon Westenberg

I know we all want to do important things. We all want to work on important products, start important companies and accomplish tasks that could change the world and have an enormous impact. I see this in entrepreneurs and the tech community more than anywhere else. The question we ask, whenever we hear about a new business or idea, whether it’s renewable energy or a messaging app or a fucking hamster sled, is this:

Will it scale ?

And then if we find out that whatever idea we’re looking at can’t instantly scale to a million users and isn’t designed to be a billion-dollar concern, we dismiss it. Sometimes, even laugh at it. When we do that, we’re being assholes. Huge assholes. Because starting a big, huge, fancy, sweating tech company isn’t the be-all and end-all, and choosing not to do that doesn’t make anyone stupid. In fact, going in the opposite direction is likely to make you happier, healthier, wealthier and shit-tonne wiser. You can choose to found an on-line small business rather than a start-up unicorn. What’s the difference? A start-up unicorn wants to grow fast and grow big, take on investment and gain dominance. An on-line small business wants to grow within clear limits, reach profitability and serve customers. It probably seems counter-intuitive, to not be shooting for huge scale. But I believe there’s enough good points that are going to make it worthwhile.

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You Can Focus On Simplicity

You’re literally building something small, within clear limits and boundaries. There’s no giant pressure to add features, meaning you have the freedom to focus on the smaller things that matter deeply to you and your users. Creating products that retain their simplicity is a huge challenge far beyond most big, growing companies. A small business doesn’t have that problem.

People Matter More

When you stay small, you can spend more time with the people who really matter in your business. Whether you have one employee or five, they’re going to be a bigger priority than if you were on a hiring spree trying to support growth. A small business is about people.

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Keeping Things Personal Is Easier

I love seeing a personal touch in every business and every product. That’s just not possible when you’re killing yourself trying to be Huge Fucking Amazing Company LLC. But it is very possible when you’re building something small. You can take the time to ensure that your users and customers are given a little magic every time.

Small Doesn’t Mean Poor

Keeping your product small and your company small doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make jack-shit and die poor. It means you’ll make less, certainly. But you have a lot more chance building a million-dollar company than you’ll ever have of building a billion dollar company. Small means lower overheads, lower cash burn rate — and the chance to keep all profits within your own company and your own pocket.

You Don’t Have To Stay Small Forever

If you do want to grow, you’ll have a much better chance of doing it from a position of power with a successful, profitable smaller company. When you already have an established product and cash-flow, you’re not only a more attractive prospect for future investors, but you can even fund your larger growth out of your own pocket. Not to mention the fact that you’ll have a wealth of knowledge and learning behind you that can only make scaling easier. Some people call it bootstrapping, but I don’t think that necessarily captures it. To me, bootstrapping just means funding a company yourself.

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Starting a small business means funding a company, setting boundaries and limits, understanding your product or service and what you want it to accomplish and working to a plan of meeting your limits. If you do that, you’re not going to be a billionaire. But you could be a very happy millionaire. And to me, that’s a pretty good option.

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In their mind

Fear, Failures and Fall with Heather Larsen Fear, Failures and Fall with Maya Gabeira & Andrew Cotton A world tour to promote microfinance with Matthieu Tordeur

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Fear is considered one of the most primal emotions. As individuals, fear is what drives us everyday. Whilst we live in a society that cherishes success, surrounded by nations that encourage fame, popularity, gain and abundance, it is completely natural to be afraid of failure, to fear decline and defeat and yet they are emotions that are difficult to admit to. However, take the burden of absolute greatness off of your shoulders because mistakes are a big part of life and of our humanity. Throughout three portraits of extreme athletes who confront fear and anxiety everyday, we tried to understand not only the burden that it can represent, but also the global humbling experience of setbacks and failures and the fascinating ordeal to fall.

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with Heather Larsen

The more I place myself in environments or situations where I experience fear, the better I know how to manage my fear. Few years ago, while on a climbing trip in Joshua Tree National Park in California, Heather Larsen became familiar with slacklining and highlining. Today, she is one of the world’s most famous professional slackliners known for walking between two sections of the Tower of David in Jerusalem’s Old City. « Walking between two towers is an incredible experience. At first, I had a lot of fear, but the more I spent time on the highline, the more comfortable I became with the environment. Sometimes, the fear is still there, but I have learned to manage my fear by breathing, staying calm and enjoying each moment – even if there is a struggle. » With a current personal highline record of 185ft (56m), the Colorado-based athlete maintains a powerful and intimate relationship with fear. Bruises, cuts, broken bones and mental strength. We chose to evoke this high-voltage fear with the girl who decided to place a 500-feet (152m) line above the ground in a canyon.

> Coast of Tasmania

Interview and words : Elisa Routa Photos : Krystle Wright, Daniel Torres, Evan Andrews

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Jay Nelson

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Monologue

Adrenaline.

Every highline is a little bit different. The variables change with every line: length, tension, stretch of the webbing, wind, sun. I honestly feel different every time I get on a line. I have been focusing more on rigging lines that are challenging for me, lines that I am uncomfortable with the tension or length. Even when I fall, I am happy because that means I am pushing myself to new limits and learning something new about the sport.

SAFE.

I am a very strong believer that fear can be a good thing. Fear is what keeps me safe. Fear is why I have learned so much about rigging redundant systems and learning the specs of the gear that I use. However, it can also keep us from progressing. I have found it is beneficial to maintain a healthy level of fear for myself and that looks different day-to-day. I also try to be aware of when fear is holding me back from pursuing the sport further or keeping me from being creative on the line.

Rite of passage.

One of my most memorable experiences was walking Deanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Line in Moab, Utah. Walking Deanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Line is one of my proudest moments as a highliner. This was a special gap to me. It signifies a time that I was progressing at an exponential rate and felt so much love and support from the community. Dean Potter was a pioneer of the sport of highlining and was an athlete I had always admired and looked up to. This line held major significance to me. It kind of seemed like a rite of passage to walk this line. I leashed into the line and tied my knot. I scooted out onto the line, stood up, took three steps and fell, catching the line with my entire body. It made me sad to not onsight send the line (sending is walking the entire length of the line without falling, onsighting is to send the first time you try). I knew I could walk this line. The potential for an onsight was no longer there, but I had to give it another shot. I scooted back and started over again.

Determination.

This time, I walked the entire length of the line without falling. I definitely had some shaky moments where I thought I might fall again, but I just told myself to breathe and relax and to be present. Before I knew it, I was on the other side of the gap. After I sent the line one way, I turned around and walked back to the original side. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fall at all. So I guess I got a one-way onsight after all.

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Heather Larsen

Bruises.

Falling is definitely part of the game. If you don’t fall, you’re probably not putting yourself in a situation that is helping you progress. Falling is a good thing. Falling into your harness is called a whipper. I fall a lot, but I don’t whip a lot. Whipping scares me more than most things, even though I know that I will be safe if I fall. My biggest fear on the highline is whipping. There are a lot of highliners that love to whip. I am not one of them. Even though I know I will only fall a short distance into my harness, I still hate whipping more than anything. I usually catch the line when I fall. Catching can be a little bit rough and you get bruised up a bit more.

Smile.

I try to embrace moments of fear as best as I can. As long as I am confident that my highline is set up properly, I am safe. So even if I experience fear, knowing that ultimately I am ok is helpful. It is natural to feel fear in the situations I put myself in. It comes down to being knowledgeable in rigging lines and confident in my ability to walk the line. I actually don’t feel like I’ve overcome fear. I feel that the more I place myself in environments or situations where I experience fear,

the better I know how to manage my fear. I have started practicing smiling when I feel afraid. A friend told me that even tension you hold in your face makes it harder to walk the line, so I try to just smile and have fun with it, even if I feel afraid.

Mental Game.

I am trying to walk different types of lines, with different heights, stretch, sag and length. I know I can walk anything if I believe I can. The mind is what limits people the most. If you tell yourself you can’t do something, you probably won’t. But if you believe you can…, just imagine! Breathing is my biggest tool on the line. Staying calm and taking slow breaths helps me so much.

Ambition.

It is such an amazing experience to walk an entire length of a highline, even if you fall a few times while crossing the gap. For me, being on the slackline is a form of meditation. The time I’ve spent on the line has shown me what I am capable of and also that I am capable of much more. I want to see what else I can do, how else I can push myself. My motivation isn’t always at a high level, but I have many friends that believe in me and give me words of encouragement to keep me going strong.

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Part 02 with Maya Gabeira and Andrew Cotton

It’s always good to step out of your comfort zone. Falling is a positive thing. Nazaré, Portugal. 3 years ago, the 29-year old surfer Maya Gabeira was squashed in what you might wanna call the world’s most fearsome wave, breaking at 60-80 feet (18-25 meters) in the stormy waters of Praia do Norte. Today, she is considered to be one of those surfers who has surfed to their wildest limits.

< Training session for Andrew Cotton in UK. > Maya Gabeira at Praia do Norte in Nazare.

Interview & words : Elisa Routa Photos Andrew Cotton : Richie Hopson, Jorge Leal Photos Maya Gabeira : Hugo Silva, Brian Bielmann

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Maya Gabeira performs at Teahupoo, Tahiti, 2013.

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Maya Gabeira & Andrew Cotton

Andrew Cotton in his hometown Croyde, United Kingdom, 2015.

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Monologue A first wave, a second wave, pretty strong and then the third one. Maya ended up in the shore break which is when the problems started. At that moment, she blew up her life jacket and spent a long period underwater. On that day of 2013, she pretty much blacked-out and was unconscious for five minutes. A busted tibia was the price she paid for taking such risks. Maya almost drowned. In 2015, she returned to Nazaré, as an entry in the Billabong Ride of the Year category of the 2016 WSL Big Wave Awards. The waves at Praia Da Norte are known for being among the largest in the world. Nazaré has often been described as the only place on the planet capable of producing a rideable 100-foot wave (30 meters). However, despite her near-death experience, Maya keeps on training today in the place that almost took her life. « We have to learn the hard way and come back more prepared, » she said in an interview. Some would say it’s craziness, others would call it determination.

The wipe out was intense

Professional athletes confront fear everyday, some more than others. They’ve built their career around fighting fear. We met the renowned big-wave rider Andrew Cotton to discuss the mysterious phenomenon of fear. « When Maya (Gabeira) almost drowned, it was a reality check. It shook everyone up. So there’s definitely a fear because the ocean is a really scary place. It can be scary when it’s flat or when the waves are giant. I think fear is quite a healthy emotion to face. Because so many times, from a young age, you are told that it’s dangerous to do this or that, for almost anything. I’ve got two children and I’m constantly telling them ‘Be careful, it’s dangerous, you’re gonna hurt yourself’. But being scared, overcoming that and pushing yourself through that, I find it to be very healthy and positive. It’s good for your mind and very positive for your body. The technique just helps me to get through it and face up to it. I have that little thing that motivates me and gets me through tough situations. Which I think at the end of the day is a good thing. »

I set goals be-

> Portrait of Maya at Porto de Abrigo in Nazare, Portugal >> Andrew Cotton performs in Killybegs, Ireland, 2016.

Born and raised on the Devon Coast, Andrew Cotton started fore sessions, surfing at a young age. Leaving school at 16, he used to travel for 3 months every winter, working for a wetsuit brand, managing a I try to think of surf shop and working as a plumber full time. Then, naturally he what I want to chose the big wave path. « I realized money wasn’t that important achieve. It helps and I decided that I’d rather surf more. I don’t really think big wave me focus towarsurfing was a choice though. For me, it was a progressive evolution. I traveled quite a lot when I was younger, I spent a few seasons in ds what I want. Hawaii when I was 18-19 years-old. My first real experience was in Waimea Bay. I just naturally enjoyed it. It’s like anything, the more you enjoy it, the more you want to do it. And the waves just got bigger and bigger, I suppose. I think I’ve always dreamt of being a professional surfer. I turned towards big waves naturally, it was just a passion of mine. With the big wave-thing, I sort of was in the right time at the right place, because I was growing. I was a bit lucky. » On November 2014, as one of the world’s most prominent big-wave charger, Andrew Cotton escaped a dramatic wipeout in Praia do Norte, Nazaré. After pushing himself through a 60feet (18 meters) giant left wave, the British surfer was caught by a huge lip and fell. After wiping out, he surfaced too far from the Jet Ski rescuers and a series of four enormous waves broke on his head. The only solution was to hold his breath. « That morning was a lot bigger than I had imagined, » explained Cotton, who was among six other big-wave surfers challenging the huge waves at world-famous Nazaré that day. « Nazaré is a pretty scary place and is definitely a challenging spot to surf. Paddling out there is tough so, as big wave surfers, we are really safety cautious at Nazaré. It’s unlike any other big wave spot I’ve ever been. But on that day in 2014, I was caught and clipped by the wave and stayed underwater for quite a long time. The next four waves broke on my head. The wipe out was intense but falling is part of the game. »

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Part 02

Used to experiencing what most people would never ever get to experience, the British surfer knows that the risk of losing his life is always a possibility. However, he doesn’t see big wave surfing as more dangerous than anything else. « In the ocean, I feel like I’m in a very natural environment. There are some other sports that I’d say are more dangerous than surfing big waves. Driving a formula 1 race car can be very dangerous as well if you’ve never done it before. If you’ve grown up doing it and you’ve done it for years, it becomes your natural environment. When I surf big waves, I’m not a risk taker and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt myself or drown. I’m very cautious. To be a professional extreme athlete, you have to be cautious, otherwise, you’re not gonna last long. » As a big wave surfer, adventurer and motivational speaker, training is a big part of his life. It helps maximise his performances and prolong his session. Having confidence in his own body brings him mental toughness. « Physically and mentally, I think proper breathing helps. I do some cardio work everyday and some belly breathing: 3 seconds in, 10 seconds out. Good deep belly breathing before, during and after surfing big waves helps a lot. It prepares the body and calms you down. I also do some yoga and mediation because it helps to maintain a positive frame of mind. Otherwise, I set goals before sessions, I try to think of what I want to achieve. It helps me focus towards what I want. I don’t just go out there to catch anything. Every season, I have a plan and goals which I write down. I like to focus my thoughts on how I’m going to surf the waves and the positions I want to be in. »

but falling is part of the game.

Despite the intensity, power and size of the massive swells, despite his near-death experiences, North Devon-based professional athlete Andrew Cotton chose to accept and handle fear. « I’ve got a lot of experience at falling off. Falling is a positive thing. Not a bad thing at all. The key is not to panic and stay calm in such a crisis situation. It’s always good to step out of your comfort zone. »

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Andrew Cotton, Croyde, UK.

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Le rebond

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They had a dream with Matthieu Tordeur and Nicolas Auber

On a world tour to spread microfinance. Matthieu Tordeur is what you’d call an apprentice adventurer. At 25, he has already spent Christmas in Lapland beyond the Arctic Circle at under -30 °, has visited Bolivia, traveled between Beijing and Shanghai and has also walked on the Great Wall of China. He’s discovered the Forbidden City and drove to the shores of Lake Baikal in Russia for an 8,000 kilometer journey through ancient Turkestan. He went on a polar expedition to Greenland and skied on an ice floe for nearly 150km. He has crossed Iceland and Ethiopia, ran the Pyongyang marathon in North Korea, completed a Transatlantic crossing to the African continent and a Transcontinental by bike for over more than 3000km without assistance and all in just 16 days. All this « just to fulfill a childhood dream, for the love of adventure, a taste for challenge and the need to surpass oneself,» he says. In September 2013, Matthieu Tordeur and Nicolas Auber decided to leave for a year on a 4L world tour in order to support the creation of companies through microcredit, thus promoting microfinance. Covering more than 50,000km of roads across the globe, these two French buddies went off to meet microfinance institutions and some fifty micro-entrepreneurs in nearly 40 countries. Result: They donated € 25,000 to selected projects and helped 150 people to create and / or develop an income-generating activity. From Normandy to India, from South-East Asia to the USA, from Brazil to the African continent, we would like to let Matthieu Tordeur, co-author of the book « 4L, a world tour of Microcredit » and actor of this crazy journey across the 5 continents be the one to tell his story.

> The Renault 4, also known as the 4L, in Morocco.

Words : Matthieu Tordeur Photos : Matthieu Tordeur & Nicolas Auber

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Basecamp

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Monologue Since childhood, I’ve always cultivated an irresistible desire for adventure. Growing up, I followed the adventures of Tintin and other great modern adventurers. In turn,I decided to follow my own path during my student years, multiplying adventures and expeditions across the world. When I talk about my journey, I usually introduce myself as an « apprentice adventurer ». I’m always on the lookout for a new way of travelling, new environments to discover and to photograph, new challenges ... Competitor of the Transcontinental Race, a cycling race across Europe, crew member aboard a transatlantic sailing boat or member of a polar skiing expedition in Greenland, I love above all to find myself confronted with nature and with myself. In 2013-2014 with my childhood friend Nicolas Auber, I made one of my childhood dreams come true: the dream to travel across the world behind the wheel of a 4L. Having returned two years earlier from a solidarity trip to Nepal where we’d installed solar panels in a remote Himalayan mountain community, we felt committed to adding a solidarity dimension to our company. We decided to set up a partnership with microfinance institutions based on our route and raised € 25,000, which we then donated to micro-entrepreneurs all over the world. In the field, we met and interviewed at least fifty of them to better understand the lever of development that is microfinance. A microcredit is the contribution of a small start-up capital to create or develop an income-generating activity. Its beneficiaries are excluded from the traditional banking system because they are sometimes illiterate or have no identity papers which makes it difficult to sign a contract. And above all the banks are cautious of lending to the less fortunate for fear of not seeing their capital paid back. The microfinance institutions we have worked with are social agencies where interest is only used to cover their operating costs and to help the 3% of entrepreneurs who fail to repay their loans.

>> Huascarán National Park, Peru

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Our objective was to discover the activities of these men and women in the field who work every day in order to meet their needs and improve their living conditions. During this round-the-world tour to promote entrepreneurship through microcredit, we worked hand-in-hand with the local loan officers of the various microfinance institutions and also with an interpreter, in order to truly enter into the daily lives of the beneficiaries. Their activities are varied, for example, owners of small businesses that do not have enough cash to buy stocks, breeders and farmers who buy seeds or livestock, small restaurateurs who provide grills, tables and chairs ... Each microfinance institution we have worked with acts according to the populations to which it is addressed. In India Microcredit is and Southeast Asia, where we have proving to be made small loans (between € 60 an extraordiand € 200), training is essential nary lever of for marginalized populations and contributes greatly to the excellent development. repayment rate of microcredits. They address accounting issues by explaining the difference between capital and profit. They also explain why the money lent should be used to develop its business and not to increase its consumption. They also talk about the risks associated with over-indebtedness and simultaneous subscriptions of several loans. These training courses are short and the trainer uses images and role playing to explain all these notions to microentrepreneurs. In South America, micro-entrepreneurs have a little more resources than in Asia, microcredits are around € 500. Some microfinance institutions such as FONDESURCO near Arequipa in southern Peru can then provide innovative and sustainable solutions to their micro-entrepreneurs, such as water heaters and solar ovens. In the tourist area of Cañon del Colca, we notably met Sulca who runs a small inn. Previously, her activity struggled to function since her hotel was too rustic for a region where the climate is so rigorous. By investing in a solar water heater she can now provide her customers with 120 liters of hot water a day and

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> Pamir Highway, Tajikistan

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Monologue

v USA

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v Lapland

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v A man in India

4 hours after night falls. She now attracts a whole new clientele and when we left her, her latest project was to build a large kitchen in order to offer local dishes to her guests. Everywhere we’ve been we have met micro-entrepreneurs who are resourceful and ingenious and do not just absorb microcredit in their business. In Oued Zem in Morocco, Ahmed is the owner of a carpentry workshop. Since he started using models from catalogues of major western furniture brands, there is no shortage of customers and he even plans to hire an apprentice in the near future. Microcredit is proving to be an extraordinary lever of development, when microfinance institutions select conscientious micro-entrepreneurs and accompany them with their loans throughout their activities. Our adventure enabled us to meet some fifty micro-entrepreneurs in 8 different countries. We have discovered an intelligent financial system that truly works for individuals and their families. It unleashes the potential of a whole community by developing not only entrepreneurship, work and willpower but also creativity. Altogether, we spent a highly colorful year meeting incredible people from all around the world. I now smile when I think back to all the pessimists who said: «You want to travel around the world in a 4L passing through Iran, Mexico, Colombia, Mauritania ...? But it’s way too dangerous, you won’t get through. And without knowing anything about mechanics, your 4L will never make it. « Many were willing to bet that we would not go further than Istanbul. It’s true, one tends to focalise only on the obstacles and to seek excuses to just stay put in one place and not take a chance. But I chose to follow the example of Antoine de SaintExupéry and live my dreams rather than dreaming my life. So with pure determination and enthusiasm, we traveled over 50,000 kilometers across 40 countries on 5 different continents. I was stunned by the kindness and hospitality of the Iranians, the self-abnegation of the Indian chauffeurs constantly driving in the wrong direction honking madly, the unique beauty of the

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With pure determination and enthusiasm, we traveled over 50,000 kilometers across 40 countries.

Salar of Uyuni in Bolivia where only the mountains in the far distance interrupted the perfect horizon between sky and salt flat. Such a long journey changed forever the 21-year-old student that I was before. It also made me aware of how lucky I was to be French. Between Mauritania and Western Sahara we found ourselves stranded among African migrants trying day after day to reach Europe. A continent that evokes so many fantasies, like a child who asked me one day: «Is it really true that you feed the wild birds back in your country?»

Not once in 335 days of traveling did I ever feel in any real danger or at all threatened (with the exception of the huge Indian TATA trucks launched at full reverse speed in our direction). Maybe luck was on my side, but what I’m sure of now is that mankind is fundamentally good. I was surprised by the benevolence and joie de vivre of the inhabitants of this planet. Even if we couldn’t always understand each other, there were few exchanges with strangers without smiles and laughter. There were few moments when I could find no one to help me and guide me. One tends to believe by listening to the radio or watching television that the world is at war and that it is a dangerous place, but I didn’t get that feeling at all on the road.

Originally there was this desire to simply drive across the world aboard our 4L in order to discover our planet. This adventure quickly turned into an overview to microfinance through the meeting of micro-entrepreneurs. With our partners, the aim has always been to promote microcredit and to educate as many people as possible. This is what I continue to do today by speaking at the Royal Geographical Society in London and with Nicolas I’m about to release a 52-minute documentary about our 4L Microcredit adventure and a photo book published by Magellan & Cie. Since we got back I have returned to university, first to King’s College London then to Sciences Po Paris in study International Business. Even though it wasn’t hard to return from such a journey back to a «normal» life, I can tell you that one thing’s for sure; I certainly can’t seem to sit still in one place for too long anymore. In April 2016 I had the chance to participate in the Pyongyang Marathon in North Korea and I am currently preparing for the Marathon des Sables 2017, 6 marathons in 6 days having to ensure total food selfsufficiency in the Sahara.

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

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06/ THE OBSERVATORY/

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Extensive view

Ice-cream Headaches by Julien Roubinet & Ed Thompson Wooden Cocoons by Jay Nelson Snowboarding as an excuse with Matt Georges Make America America again by Larry Niehues

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Ice-Cream Headaches by Julien Roubinet and Ed Thompson

The local surf scene is so rich, culturally speaking, that we decided to create a panorama of this culture, living ourselves to the states of New York and New Jersey. > Author Russell Drummâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s board < Tom Petriken

Photos : Julien Roubinet Interviews of surfers : Ed Thompson Words : Elisa Routa

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> New-York native surfer Mikey DeTemple < Mikey DeTempleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collection of boards

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The Observatory French photographer Julien Roubinet was not meant to end up spending most of his time on East coast beaches, taking pictures of American surfers. A few years ago, he used to study in a business school in France, with the ambition to work in the financial industry. « My very first professional experience was in finance. A standard routine where only weekends seemed exciting. My girlfriend was offered a job in New York 5 years ago. A few months later, I left France to be with her. »

v Frozen waters of the East coast > Mikey DeTemple Sailingboat

Originally from Toulouse in France, Julien has never been used to getting up close and personal with the ocean. « At that time, my only interaction with the ocean was limited to one or two weeks of bodyboarding per year. » Paradoxically, when he landed in the urban mecca, best known for its iconic skyline, Julien started to take an interest in the waves. « When I arrived in NYC, I learnt that there was a beach about an hour’s ride on the tube from downtown. Waves there are rarely exceptional but when the storm season comes in autumn and the Noreasters in winter, beach-breaks need not be envious of the rest of the US. Beyond Rockaway Beach, there are some really great spots, point breaks and powerful beach breaks. The problem remains the consistency of the swells. » Surfing exists in New York City since the 1960s but it seems that it has only really taken off in the past 5 years. « The image of surfing is omnipresent all around the city; in shop windows, coffee shops, restaurants and bars. However, winter repels most surfers. It’s easy to surf alone in spots where there are usually 20 or 30 people in summer. Every session is an adventure, getting changed under the snow, getting out of water with stalactites forming on their hoods. Surfing in New York is also fascinating because of the people you meet in the water. Musicians, artists, photographers, writers, locals, celebrities, everybody seems friendly. »

After a year spent surfing in New York City, Julien understood how unique the local surf scene was. He decided to co-write a book with England-born writer Ed Thompson, documenting the surf scene on the East coast of the US. « The local surf scene is so rich, culturally speaking, that we decided to create a panorama of this culture, living ourselves in New York and New Jersey. Through interviews, stories, portraits of people who participate in the development of this landscape, we document the surf culture in this part of the country. The main focus is to shed light on the surfers, shapers, photographers, filmmakers, writers who truly represent the soul of surfing and the challenges of life lived with an obsession for the ocean. »

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The point is go out and have a good time - who gives a shit about all that… Michael Halsband

From free surfer Tom Petriken to the late author and longtime reporter Russell Drumm or the world famous photographer Michael Halsband who photographed Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat through to the writer William Finnegan and New York native professional surfer Mikey DeTemple, every profile is fascinating. « After 3 years on the road, we’ve produced a book which is due to come out soon. » Discover more about the Ice-cream Headaches book project on their website www.icecreamheadaches.nyc.

<|> Chris Gentile, Joseph Falcone & Michael Halsband

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Joseph Falcone in his shaping bay

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Mikey DeTemple

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Russell Drumm

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Surfer, Artist & Designer Jay Nelson turned a fantasy into a reality.

Words : Elisa Routa

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< Golden Gate 2’’ 2014 90’’x54’’x62’’ > Installation from pairing, 2016, Paintings on wood and rope structure

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level, they provide us with a safe place to rest and think. But they also determine the way we interact with each other and create a frame for the outside world. » Nelson explains. « Arranging the pieces of a structure is infinite and those arrangements make us who we are. » Always following one guideline, San Francisco-based artist chooses to produce handcrafted creative pieces over the convenience of mass-produced goods. In 2014, as part of House trucks, a wooden Patagonia’s Worn Wear Tour, camper hull atop a fully the designer built a solarfunctional boat, a social powered camper shell from sphere, surf-concept vehicles, redwood salvaged from giant wine barrels, mounted on a a submarine-shaped annex, ’91 Dodge Cummins fueled by a Hawaiian wood cabin, and camper vans. Through organic biodiesel, called ‘The Worn shapes, these are what Jay Wear Wagon’. Inspired by Nelson instinctively draw The Temporary Autonomous on paper. « I’m interested in Zone by anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey, Nelson has architectural forms because of the weight they carry in been creating temporary our lives. On the most basic autonomous structures for the Today, California-based artist still finds his inspiration in the branches of the trees to create handmade quality mobile structures. The surfer and artist considers his creations to be a collaboration between the tree and the builder. « I don’t use plans to build, just ideas. With that, come moments of uncertainty and, at times, despair. For me, these structures are about working through uncertainty and dark paths. »

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last decade. In between building some of his dreamy mobile wooden structures, Jay Nelson has also been designing a 200-square-foot cabin in Haena, Kauai. As an accomplished artist, he also built his first modified vehicle at San Francisco’s iconic Mollusk Surf Shop, a ’91 Honda Civic. More recently, Jay designed an « Observatory » at Facebook, a dome-shaped creation with a circular window overlooking the San Francisco Bay, on the roof top of a building. « A window is a way of directing a person’s gaze towards a view or an idea I want to share. I use furniture to influence interaction with a space an art work or another person. The roof and walls encourage privacy, intimacy and inwardness. Lighting draws the gaze. »

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Ranging from the ultimate 80’s mobile surf shack for surfer and friend Rob Machado, to his one-ofa-kind electric camper cars made out of plywood, fiberglass, and bicycle parts, Nelson is recognized for giving room for creativity. Above all, the objective in Nelson’s work is using structures to direct an experience. « Sometimes I’m directing an experience for myself, like with my mobile structures and dwellings, and other times I’m directing an experience for an audience. » Over the years, Jay Nelson joined a new generation of artists and progressive surfers in San Francisco, and exhibited in renowned galleries and museums around the world.

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Copper Camper, 2015, project with Foster Huntington on Suzuki Samuri

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Marseille boat, 2012, from exhibit at Fa Friche in Marseille, France

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Snowboarding as an excuse. Matt Georges Matt Georges grew up in a little village in the French Alps, located at 1000 meters of altitude. He started skiing at 2 years old, before getting into skateboarding and snowboarding during his teenage years. At that time, he used to describe himself as a ÂŤ snowboarder and a skate rat Âť. At 17, he got introduced to photography by learning how to print pictures in a darkroom. At 19, he found interest again in being up in the mountains. Since that time, Matt Georges is considered one of the best snowboard photographers of his generation. Words : Elisa Routa Photos : Matt Georges

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Markus Keller in the in the Arlberg region, Austria

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The Obsevatory

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Matt Georges

< Laax, Switzerland > Kazushi Yamauchi aka Yama San

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Polaroids, emulsions, burned, bleached or transferred pictures, Matt Georges is known for his powerful and instinctive shots. Using different processes, often playing around with chemical accidents, products, filters, and analog tools, Matt has been producing a consistent work in both analog and digital mediums for the past 10 years. As a photo editor and staff photographer for major magazines such as Freestyler, Method Mag, Onboard and Whitelines magazines, he has shot numerous ad campaigns for various clients such as Vans, Roxy, Rhythm, or Nokia. Throughout portraits, action and abstracts shots, his work has always been winter or snow-oriented, bringing a different approach to most of the outdoor winter sports photography we’re used to seeing. In the middle of a storm under -30°C, always searching for fresh and untracked snow, with low visibility, strong winds, no phone signal, far away from any civilization, under threats of unexpected freak avalanches, steep slopes or big cliffs drops, this is what the French photographer is searching for : A Challenge. « I like the fog, the flakes and low visibility. I find blue sky a bit boring. »

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Over the years, hostile and uncomfortable conditions have taught Matt Georges to get even more creative. The talented photographer and graphic designer recently launched his own publishing house entitled The.Dirty.Dogs., producing an annual eponymous limited edition crafted photobook. « As soon as you’re comfortable with the rules, they’re here to be broken, » He says. Gathering together a group of snowboarding’s most dedicated photographers and creative minds, Matt managed to produce an independent hand bound 190-pages coffee table book with hundreds of beautiful shred shots, crafted and printed in the French and Swiss Alps. Make sure to follow his work for your winter dose of fresh pow.

> Fredi Kalbermatten, in Saas-Fee, Switzerland >> Markus Keller in Arlberg

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Matt Georges

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I like the fog, the flakes and low visibility. I find blue sky a bit boring.

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Matt Georges

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Interview: Fabrice Le Mao Photos: Larry Niehues

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by Larry Niehues

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I was born in Avignon and grew up in Rochefort-du-Gard, a typical village in the south-east of France with a church and a wash house, the complete cliché of a Provencal village. I’m 28 years old. As far back as I can remember, my parents have always been passionate about America. At home, we talked about it, dreamt about it. America played a big part in our lives, sometimes almost by proxy, always in our imagination. My dad drove an old Dodge pickup. They gave me an American name. Frankly, the US has always been in my line of sight. I laid my hat in Los Angeles six years ago and have been earning a living from photography for five years. I started taking pictures in France almost 8 years ago. My brother had launched the brand Fat Boy Clothing. We didn’t often have the budget to work with photographers and even if we had, we still would have wanted to do everything ourselves. That’s how I came to buy a small Sony Alpha and start shooting. My friends were my guinea pigs and as soon as I felt a bit more comfortable with taking photographs, I started to shoot motocross events. It became my whole world. After a while, I changed and started shooting custom bikes. Finally, I decided to send some photos to a few motorcycle magazines and I ended up having them published.

I wanted to escape, but most of all, I wanted to pursue my dream of coming to settle in the United States. My first time here was thanks to Christian Audigier, a very good friend of my father’s. He called us, my brother, my mother and I, to go visit him in the US. He was going to celebrate his birthday and wanted to give us a little present. My brother and I were so excited. In pure Audigier style, we lived the true American lifestyle: a limousine at the airport, a suite at the Standard hotel. M6 was even doing a story on Christian at the time so they followed us around 24/7. There was Snoop Dog, Michael Jackson and all of the other big L.A. celebrities. But funnily enough, all that wasn’t appealing to my brother and I. It really wasn’t our scene.

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Larry Niehues

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In 2010, I made the «big move». I told myself that if I didn’t try to make it here in Los Angeles, then I would never try it in any other city. I felt invincible. I started shooting videos in the music industry, clothing brands, artists and motorcycles, thanks to my friend Dean of Dice Magazine. He was and remains one of my best encounters, I am infinitely grateful to him. He believed in me and boosted my self-confidence. The first rolls of film I developed were a mix between lessons of humility and good surprises. I need to be surprised by a result. The light is mysterious and capricious. Overexposed or burned photos have more charm sometimes. I always leave the imperfections of the film in, the small scratches that I could easily erase with Photoshop. Sometimes I take pictures whilst driving. Either because I don’t have the time to get out of the car or because the place where I am is not safe. Again, the result is sometimes surprising. One day, I was commissioned

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by a clothing brand to shoot at Victorville, in the desert. Los Angeles does not represent America ... it’s just a part of America. As soon as you leave the city, without having to go very far, you’ll come across traditional villages which seem to be frozen in time. I had my little Nikon FE with me and a roll of 400 TRX expired film. I saw two cowboys walking on the side of the road. I parked up but didn’t have the guts to ask them to pose fo me, so I shot them from behind. I developed the film and when I saw the result, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I want to show people that the Old America still exists. I remembered Robert Frank’s bestselling book «The Americans». A huge inspiration for my work. In the US, facing the incredible majesty of places such as YellowStone or the Mississippi Delta, places which inspire respect and humility for nature, there is the world of men. Layers and layers of contrasts in which extreme richness rubs shoulders with extreme poverty. There

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are villages - or sometimes neighborhoods - completely frozen in time. Witnesses of a prosperity that is better distributed than today. There is a notion of timelessness in this America. As if she was waiting for some sort of permission to move forwards. Behind the melancholy of disuse, there is a pride and a great nobility in this America. At least that’s the feeling I get when I find myself in these virtually lost places I stumble upon. The life of a photographer is based on encounters and contact with people. Even when I «steal» an image, it’s as if I was meeting the subject. That’s probably the reason I am passionate about the photo-journalism of Dennis Hopper, Robert Franck or William Eggleston. They shoot with silver based film by necessity. I shoot with silver based film by choice in order to find a similar creative process. The constraints and paradoxes of silver based film are much more interesting. You just have to take your time. Me, I’m always on the road. I stop

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off in historical city centers or old quarters. Photographically speaking, the buildings could almost be enough. But for me to be satisfied, I need a character, a human element. From the moment you point a camera at people, they cease to be natural and yet it is the real moment that’s interesting. So I try to be as discreet as possible when I shoot. I’ve been working for 3 years on this project; a collection of photographs shot entirely on silver-based film, 35mm. I hope to finish next year. It will retrace all my travels. I have yet to visit Alaska and Hawaii. It’ll be a bit like «Travelling across Analogue America». It’s impossible to be a photographer and to not have the ambition to publish your work on paper. Social networks and the Internet are useful in some specific cases, but paper is the medium on which art is expressed. I’ll be so happy when this book comes out. I know that I’ll experience a sense of fulfillment that I never could have felt from just ‘likes’.

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LE clan /

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Collaborations

Wolf Pack Leather x Swenson

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Wolf Pack Leather x Swenson Charlotte Hand lives in Cronulla, a coastal town south of Sydney, nestled between national parks and idyllic bays that carry the names of cartoon characters. As a kid, Charlotte lived in Queenscliff, a village a few kilometers south of Freshwater, a spot which became famous thanks to the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku and Manly Beach. Perched on a hill, her mother’s house overlooked one of Australia’s most coveted beaches. « I grew up watching the surfers. When I was 11, a neighbour offered me a surfboard. I went surfing every day. I never took lessons, I learned everything by myself. » A few years ago, the young Australian girl had a lot of sponsors on her surfboard and competed in the junior pro circuit in Australia. She was one of those pro surfers who travelled the world in search of pretty waves and prizes to be won, except that the pressure of competitions was not really her thing. « We were a small group of friends and we created this team: ‘The Team Nothing’! Because our sponsors didn’t treat us the same way as they did the others. » With a lot of talent in her legs and a good dose of self-derision in her boardbag, Charlotte ended up on the WQS. « It only lasted a year but I did my best until my last contest. Then I stopped. I didn’t like the pressure that they put on us. I’m very competitive but when it comes to surfing, I just don’t know how to be. »

Words: Elisa Routa Photos: Holly Ellems

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After that last competition, Charlotte stopped surfing for 2 years, from 2009 to 2011, feeling the need to put an end to a lifestyle that simply didn’t suit her anymore. « Even nowadays, her friends often say to her: «Do you remember when you quit surfing? » Naturally, she got back on a surfboard after a while thanks to different encounters, such as Dave Rastovich. « I started hanging out with people who were brilliant surfers but who were much more mellow. Free surfers. Dave Rasta is one of them. I like the way he just surfs whatever and wherever. He’s a great guy and he happens to surf a 4’5. I don’t know how he does it! This crew influenced me a lot. They changed my vision of surfing. I started surfing on lots of different boards. It became my new challenge. » At that time, Charlotte was studying natural medicine but the structure of the university had many constraints. « I felt overwhelmed, I couldn’t be myself. One day, I just got up and said to myself, ‘Ok, today, everything’s got to change.’ I needed to develop my creative mind. Once I started working with leather, I never stopped. » That was three years ago. Wolf Pack Leather is now known for its attachment to traditional techniques, such as hand stitching and the use of basic tools. The rest is the result of self-directed learning. « I’ve read a lot of books but I’ve learned mostly through trial and error. » Through each of her products, Charlotte highlights the authenticity of her approach. By working Bridle leather as well as vegetable tanned leather, she emphasizes the rustic side of the material, which she sometimes orders from Italy. « Quality and durability are essential to manufacturing. » Thus, Swenson is pleased to present its collaboration with Wolf Pack Leather: An elegant leather Bridle key chain made from a noble and prestigious material, known for its robustness and raw, natural appearance. By combining craftsmanship with the superior quality of the leather, blending traditional techniques with elegance and refinement and our passions with common values, we have designed a useful and stylish product just for you.

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Wolf Pack Leather

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Bridle leather key fob details: 3-4mm Bridle Leather by Thoroughbred in USA Bridle leather is vegetable tanned leather that has been heavily treated with tallow and wax’s Burnished by hand Color «Thoroughbred» Embossed with branding: Logo «Swenson» on one side (3,5cm), Logo Wolf Pack Leather on the other side Solid brass rivets are hand peened by striking with a hammer Solid Brass Fittings- clip & splitting

You can find this on our store : www.swenson-store.com

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