Sublime

The company started when founders Marshall Haas and Jon Wheatley became interested in applying the knowledge they’d acquired from working at tech firms to physical products. Prior to their partnership, Marshall was making money selling products that you couldn’t actually touch (software), and Jon was creating things that could be touched, but

Bill and I had decided we were going to reinvest our profits and not resort to long-term borrowing. I felt very strongly about this issue, and we found we were clearly able to finance 100 percent growth per year by reinvesting our profits. After some discussion with the members of the board, they seemed to be impressed with what we were doing but

When we started, we wanted to build a company that we would like to work at and we kept applying that criterion. I remember, when we first hired people in the original days, John and I would take turns hand-delivering a dozen roses to the spouse if it was woman, a bottle of cognac if the spouse was a man, and then champagne to the employee. We did

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard discusses in his book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.

What they all do share, as our organizational development consultant noted, is a passion for something outside themselves, whether for surfing or opera, climbing or gardening, skiing or community activism.

we invented a water-based bonding agent that gives off no fumes, thereby eliminating 97 percent of the carcinogens in the air. Then we gave this invention to our competitors, handed it over to anyone