• Fast Company, Wednesday, July 1, 2009 10:38 AM

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, and his buddy, Tom Brokaw, dropped by Fast Company to chat about a number of topics, from green marketing in general to Wal-Mart's model of sustainability, in particular. But perhaps the most instructive video clip from this interview for product marketers deals with underwear.

When Chouinard told his product design team to lose the plastic and cardboard packaging on the underwear, he initially encountered a lot of resistance. They'd be competing with fancy underwear that came in soup cans. They'd alienate Europeans, who would not buy underwear that someone else had touched. They'd see a 30% drop in sales.

Well, sales actually went up 30%, and Chouinard says that the product no longer sits on the shelf for nine months of the year waiting for ski season. His target is the environmentally conscious shopper who may be consuming less but buys products that "will last a long, long time."

Read the whole story at Fast Company »