Patagonia London flagship store

Californian outdoor gear and apparel company Patgonia announced the opening of its first UK flagship store in Covent Garden. With 2,500sq ft of retail space, the store will feature the full Patagonia offering from core technical alpine and ski/snowboard products,

and ski/snowboard products, to lifestyle and footwear collections.

Founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, the London store will be a partner store in collaboration with Outside, who also opened Patagonia’s Hathersage store in the Peak District. The Covent Garden space was selected in keeping with the company’s retail brief, to use historic sites and to preserve the integrity of the building. Patagonia and Outside intend to work collaboratively with the architects to ensure sensitivity when working with the historical aspects of this unique space, which they hope will in turn be enhanced by the bespoke fixtures and fittings which are to be sourced.

Since 1996 Patagonia has used only organically grown cotton in its clothing line and uses recycled materials. With the launch of synthetic fibre-to-fibre recycling program, the company is recycling an increasing quantity of its the textile range into new products, capturing the petroleum used in making virgin fibre. With its Environmental Grants Program, the company dedicates annually 1% of its sales to environmental protection and its Environmental Internship Program allows employees to work for environmental groups for 2 months while receiving their full paycheck.

To inspire other companies, owner Yvon Chouinard co-founded the 1% for the planet club in 2001, gathering more than 1000 companies worldwide, all giving 1% of their sales to environmental groups. Patagonia’s sales for last fiscal year end of April 2010 were $333 million.

Image: Ski/snowboarding by Patagonia