Patagonia Stops Selling Vests To Some Finance Firms | Hacker News Reader

Patagonia Stops Selling Vests To Some Finance Firms

buzzfeednews.com

150 pointskaboro74 comments

Um, you guys... the PR firm that uncovered this alleged plot is called - wait for it - “Vested”.

“Kim, president of the communications agency Vested (the reference is to the finance term, not the sleeveless layer), attempted to place an order for a client...”

Their website is www.fullyvested.com and their recruiting page is titled In-Vested. Get it? In Vested.

Scroll down the article to the satirical Instagram post with a new definition of “Divest” involving “guys named Chad.”

Announcing it yesterday would have made the prank too obvious.

Hats off to the creative director at Vested for pulling off a masterful stroke of guerilla marketing. Now they are on the radar of tons of finance firms who know that this firm “feels their pain,” so to speak. Well played on all fronts.

Nothing here indicates a prank to me. The Instagram post was from half a year ago and is from an account that semi-famous in NY for making fun of finance bros. The author just included it as an example of how the vest is associated with finance culture.

Midtown uniforms?

https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112800424543780864

Yeah, I saw the denial... I was still skeptical. But I found what appears to be confirmation by Patagonia: https://twitter.com/patagonia/status/1113110848778768384 So at this point I guess I am forced to concede that this is legit, and the fact that this emerged from a company named "Vested" on April Fools is just an absurd coincidence. My bad.

"Frequently wrong, never in doubt" <== my motto, due to situations like this

Well it's a smart move. They are simply protecting the integrity of their brand. They built a reputation based on a set of corporate values that are not necessarily aligned with those companies that embroider their logo in those vests. They probably don't make a lot of money from those corporate sales either. Any risk of damaging the brand by association is not worth it.

That whole April Fool's thing kinda went over your head.

I think it actually went over yours (from the article):

>"A representative for Patagonia confirmed it has recently changed its policy, but declined to say exactly when this change happened. Here is the company’s statement:

“Our corporate sales program manages Patagonia’s sales to other companies, non-profits and other organizations. We recently shifted the focus of this program to increase the number of Certified B Corporations, 1% For The Planet members and other mission-driven companies that prioritize the planet. This shift does not affect current customers in our corporate sales program.”"

Or yours.

Don't think I can take Ms. Notopoulos seriously when she doles out dreck like this:

> The Power Vest flaunts a very cruel male privilege: being comfortable.

> The Power Vest is a form of male privilege, a hideous fleece totem of the patriarchy’s oppression of non-cis-male people in the workplace.

Seriously? It's just a vest.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/i-wore-...

It's pretty clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek. In "researching" power vests she wore a L.L.Bean fleece vest from 1995, I wouldn't exactly call it overly subtle. Maybe a bit of introspection about why you found the writing upsetting instead of funny is in order?

>Don't think I can take Ms. Notopoulos seriously

i'm not entirely sure you were supposed to.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It's Poe's Law but with reputational damage if you guess wrong in the wrong situation. Take it seriously and it wasn't? You're a buffoon. Take it as a joke when it's serious? You're an insensitive asshole and a bigot, and nobody can make the case you were acting in good faith and made a mistake.

The dangers of engaging with satire are very real. However the costs paid are generally short-lived and to the open-minded and those able to find humor in themselves, repaid in full if not in excess.

not offering a comment is always an option.

That's her writing style. I think it's a bit of satire. She once wrote an article about something I did and it was as hyperbolic. It was a mix of "WTF are you talking about?" and "Well, that's actually kind of funny".

The article is rather tongue-in-cheek, but it's also not wrong.

> The Power Vest flaunts a very cruel male privilege: being comfortable.

That's written to get a chuckle out of you, but it's also touching upon a real truth. Men are allowed to dress a lot more comfortably than women are in the same situation.

> Ms. Notopoulos

An obviously fake name, BTW.

> Ms. Notopoulos

Plus... Notopoulos

Not O'Poulos.

Not of the chicken.

Not afraid.

We can conclude this isn't a real person, as they're not afraid to be outed, as in having their arms out wearing a vest.

Clever indeed.

Bit odd - obviously the author has never worked in a factory or a lab in the winter.

And I would have thought something a bit more up market from Barbour or Burberry - those vests in the pics just look so fugly.

I am so happy to see this. I have supported Patagonia as a consumer due to their commitment to corporate responsibility, specifically their (more) ethical clothing manufacturing practices.

When I’m in the Bay Area and see every private equity bro wearing a Patagonia fleece, it makes me wonder if they are supporting the brand for the same reason.

Ultimately it shouldn’t matter. But I’d rather be associated with the responsibly sourced clothing brand than the financial engineering brand.

I find it odd that excluding religious groups is now considered good ethics.

Religion and conservatism do tend to be pretty aligned, and this seems to be about being a more progressive brand or something

Can you explain what you're referring to with "excluding religious groups"?

The tweet in the article states that Patagonia is now excluding religious groups https://twitter.com/binnaskim/status/1112731360244961283

Oh thanks for the heads up. Seems entirely reasonable to exclude religious groups who promote anti-environmentalism.

They're not blanket excluding religious groups.

I don't think it's 'ethics' - rather than they are just trying to avoid any kind of controversy.

Let's get real folks: it's just a totally synthetic fleece in a totally commodity package. There's nothing really special about Patagonia. It's just a brand.

I'd buy it because I like the design, possibly, not because of their corporate positioning / PR spin.

I don't.

Lots of finance meme accounts reflect the "Patagucci" culture of finance - check out these - they frequently showcase "sleds" - $300+ (frankly, tasteless) Gucci and Ferragamo shoes that are sort of a "post-intern" status symbol. I follow these accounts to try and have a pulse on when the next recession will hit.

https://www.instagram.com/hoeingforyield/ https://www.instagram.com/finance_god/

I could absolutely see why Patagonia wants to distance itself from these sorts of fratty, money-focused business cultures. Same with Venture Capital.

This thread is worth it just for the instagram links above!

For ex. https://www.instagram.com/p/BvH3sS1FuPy/

More than $300 gosh - in the City a lot of the ones crushing it are wearing £2800 hand made shoes.

Yeah, $300's like entry-level for good shoes if you're not importing from somewhere cheap (might get down into the neighborhood of $200 then) or shopping seconds or other bargains (again, down around $200). Or buying used I guess, which is A Thing.

Bravo!

I hope this (and Nike with Kaepernick) is the start of a wave in society calling companies to task over advertising shilling.

Personally, and I've expressed this numerous times, I find advertising to be absolutely devastating on the efficiency of modern society so... let's de-brand everything wee!

In Soviet utopia, only one toothbrush. Very efficient, yes?

Contrary to the misconceptions of many people who have never actually lived in the Soviet Union, there were multiple, competing brands of consumer goods, all the way from radios, to automobiles [1] and refrigerators.

[1] Off that list, of course, automobiles were very difficult to obtain.

I see your tongue in your cheek; nonetheless, I have struggled with the very idea you entertain. Marking that a product comes from a particular place allows the non knowledgeable person to find more of that thing. A separate-but-related idea is that of advertising, i.e. putting the idea of a product out there separately from the good itself. Nobody thinks they like it, but I know that some of the more meaningful experiences in my life (finding local improv, for instance) have come as a result of effective advertisement.

I suppose the problem is not that advertisement or branding exists at all --- but how it exists today. I don't know if this is the "resting state" of advertisement/branding or not.

Advertising, at it's best, informs consumers of choice - if this were the type of advertising we saw in the modern world that's fine - posting a DIY tool shed build and including links to specific tools that might be useful is helpful, and I think that's why we've seen sponsored content come into prominence, briefly be useful, and then get swarmed by BS.

We need to find some way, societally, to limit how much of this wave'o'advertising we're exposed to - to place a value on time and remove the "cold call" style of advertising pitches. I was optimistic about ad-words when it first rolled out because, given the context awareness and unobtrusiveness, I thought it might kill advertising dead - and it sort of did. We no longer have the "Shoot the pirate" flash banner ads, nor the popups for v1agr4 since that over the top attention grab ended up being pushed out by more relevant product advertising... but we're backsliding again.

If you're an advertiser and I raise my hand and say "I'm looking for a power drill" or even "I'm looking for something to do on saturday" then feel free to make your case - but this unsolicited BS is like the bane that once was door-to-door salesmen, it's actually a hilariously parallel - your time is being taken, something is invading your private space and you're being interrupted from doing something you'd like to do to listen to someone shill.

I'm curious why you think ads are so bad for efficiency. By and large, I only encounter ads in my "free time" and I'm consuming content, i.e. not while at work. Annoying to be sure, but not something that wastes my productive time.

Not my comment, but possibly they were thinking around the idea of modern advertising causing overall less rational economic decisions to be made by polluting the market with more objectively false information than true (resulting in products and services being purchased where the utility gained for the price is not maximised). As a hypothetical example, if a particularly effective marketing campaign resulted in the market preferring a particular poor quality lightbulb over an equally priced but better quality alternative, there would be an economy-wide misallocation of resources into building poor quality lightbulbs.

Actually I was more referring to the effect that constant advertising has on our attention span and possibly even our society at large.

We know we are constantly being fed B.S. so reading something with an open mind is difficult in the modern world, chances are there's some sort of sponsored content push in there somewhere - so we skim read before reading to check for ads, then we stop doing that second step and just take a surface scan of data. Our brains are so constantly bombarded with advertising that we're now receiving advertising, occasionally, for retreats where we can get away from all the advertising and noise of the modern world.

I have a personal, lovely example for this which is so beautifully clear - sandwich boards. Sandwich boards are those tilted sidewalk signs that shops put out for anyone who isn't aware, they can cause a moderate increase in traffic to a store because they're annoying - specifically. Signs that are hung from an awning above a shop don't obstruct people so their attention doesn't catch them as often, while as sandwich boards are more than happy to block half the sidewalk and force you to walk around them in an effort to be noticed - their usage is valid when indicating a temporary state, since the cost of hanging an awning sign to let people know that the ping-pong tournament has been moved down the street is silly and often not an option - but when that board is just advertising an establishment (even if doing that advertising by letting you know about a sale) then they can often be seen below an awning sign that is perfectly visible from the same angle (window painting and displays tend to be less visible to pedestrians so there is a valid reason to have some angled description of your business)

So, let's do away with all these sandwich boards - they exist for no reason other than to annoy us and get in our way. They occasionally make narrow sidewalks difficult to traverse for people with walkers or wheelchairs and what, as a society, are we getting for that cost? Nothing.

Sandwich boards are a beautiful example of this since so many of us encounter them daily, but lots of other advertising goes out of it's way to be obtrusive, to steal some of your mind's attention (jingles) or to be visually distracting (flashy banner ads). This shit has costs that we all pay, and the value we, as a society, reap for paying that cost is dwarfed by the cost - people are already spending almost all their money constantly so this advertising war isn't to make sure people make informed choices, it's to steal the sale away from a different product.

How would you want such a wave to form, in the form of regulation?

And now that Colin Kavanaugh has made waves, others can tag along, and force still more companies to de-brand.

Here we have a company that has cobranded with others in the past, but over time there has been a sentiment shift and now it wishes to distance itself from what this particular area of society reflects.

It's interesting because it is sort of a rebrand for Patagonia to move away from this market. I have no idea if the numbers of cobranded vests are large and material on their revenue. If I had to guess I would probably say no. However, the public sentiment on this and seeing these vests on wall st and in VC circles could be actually a potentially damaging blow to the brand. One that was originally self inflicted.

Based on them looking to move away from this I would have to guess that they aren't really happy with this direction. Kind of like the Colin Kaepernick ads with Nike, though on a much smaller scale.

Oh come on, don't drag Jared into this, he's one of the good ones! And his vest isn't even co-branded.

From what I have gathered, reason vests are popular in SF is due to daily weather fluctuations since they are light weight. I did not know they were popular in other cities/metros too. Especially in finance sector.

One of the only interesting observations in the (awful, just awful, I cannot emphasize enough how bad it is) sequel to The Prep Handbook is that synthetic fleece had, since the first book, became a hugely popular exception to the usual prep-set rule of "no synthetics", largely for practical reasons (at least at first). I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit of dressed-down prep fashion being expressed or imitated, at least by a certain set of the folks wearing it. Finance'd be the right crowd for that.

[EDIT] that is, The Official Preppy Handbook. The sequel's called True Prep and is, again, awful, do not read it, it has none of the fun, well-voiced humor of the first, it's bad, bad, bad.

I work in finance (in the midwest), and for some reason, all of the offices I've worked in seem to be kept at an unreasonably low temp, like 68F or lower year-round. That would be fine if I was active, but I'm sitting at a computer from 830a-500p. I've routinely been cold enough to start shivering or to lose dexterity in my hands as they stiffen from the cold.

I can't wear sweatshirts at my current job, but used to at my 3 previous jobs. Now, it's a button down shirt and either a sweater or vest. Ive plenty of both, but none corporate branded.

Vests are nice in that they can easily be removed and put back on.

Most of my sweaters are partial zip. I can't easily remove one without my shirt and undershirt coming with it (I'm a guy, but I still think its rude to go flashing my bare chest & back in an office).

Maybe this is because I'm not in that particular tech scene, but is this a thing? Between that and the linked article:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/i-wore-...

I am honestly not sure.

I don’t see vests that much but see black Patagonia puff jackets everywhere, both branded and unbranded.

big opportunity for Summit Ice

"All those evil hedge funds and “Uber-for-X” tech startups can go pound sand."

Why are "Uber-for-X" startups and hedge funds lumped into the same category? Is the "Uber-for-X" business model unethical or does it bring no value to consumers?

Uber for x usually means “let’s break laws and ‘disrupt’ an industry where workers had a reasonable quality of life and further push the gig economy” I’m fully okay with calling that out for being detrimental.

At least a hedge fund invests money for clients and pays taxes (sometimes)

This is epic. I actually received one of these at a event last week. I actually thought it was horribly tacky, living someplace not California where jackets need arms to prevent frostbite. I had no idea that they were a part of the culture wars.

Why doesn't someone just take this to the next level and make one of these with an FYIFV logo?

I saw this on @litquidity and thought it was still an April fools headline

Yes, and the clothing industry is well known to be employee friendly and to generously share revenue with the whole supply chain.

The day they publish their margin and cost breakdown, I may listen to their PR BS.

Patagonia are absolute pioneers of sustainable clothing, and significantly pushed the industry in the right direction. Please spend 30 seconds on their corporate website, or go read Let my people go surfing before making unsustaniated critiques.

I'm not sure if they publish their finances, but being employee friendly and boosting their supply chain is kind of a large part of their identity as a company. Maybe you consider it to be simply propaganda, but you are aware of the founder's book titled Let My People Go Surfing?

I may be biased... I have worked for a company "employee oriented" which also had an big association to help needing people. So now I only trust the numbers and not the PR on their website.

Outstanding.

And of course, on-brand.

More for L.L. Bean, I guess.

Love it.

Vests make a corporate comeback!

They're free to do business with whomever they wish to, of course, but this seems an odd choice.

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