During the past year I have been in correspondence and conversation with a number of people who are transitioning their companies to employee ownership, starting worker co-ops, or thinking in new ways about worker ownership and cooperative business.
Among them:
- Rick Dubrow and Cindy Landreth at A-1 Builders in Bellingham, WA, who are working on an employee buyout of the business they bought in 1976 from the original owner who started it in 1955
- Jamie Odegaard who, with four friends, is starting a worker owned building company in Western Massachusetts
- James Kosacz, the president of Autoworks in Kittery, ME, who is considering selling to his employees
- Mark Skimson, in Terrace, BC, who is leading an effort to make a co-op purchase of a small ski area called Shames Mountain (following the path blazed by Mad River Glen in Vermont)
- Jeffrey Hollender and Gregor Barnum, formerly of Seventh Generation in Vermont (Jeffrey was the founder of 7th Gen) who are developing a major new—and very exciting—co-operative enterprise.
And the list goes on.
I was taken by their energy and passion.
One of my most rewarding chance encounters of this sort has been with Brendan Jones of Greensaw Design and Build in Philadelphia. For months we went back and forth as this young entrepreneur and his cohorts worked through a plan to transition from a sole proprietorship to a worker-owned cooperative business.
Last month I went to Philadelphia to participate in a wonderful celebration of the birth of the business in its new incarnation. These kids captured my heart: I was taken by their energy and passion.
Click here to read Crafting a Business Owned by its Workers, an article that was published this week in Philadelphia’s primary daily, the Inquirer.
Good stuff.
Rodney North
John,
This is very encouraging for all the obvious reasons, but also because we at Equal Exchange have been trying to share our own experience and lessons learned with entrepreneurs who have been either seriously considering a conversion to a worker co-op structure, or are well on their way.
Therefore it’s reassuring to see that even more folks than we thought are entertaining – and actually taking – this exciting path, and that you’re they’re to assist them.
We recently hosted a visit from a small Fair Trade coffee roaster in New Zealand who is taking a hard look at a co-op conversion. And we’re excited to see that our friends at Namaste Solar in Boulder CO have recently completed their conversion to becoming worker co-op.
For more on this cool new member of the co-op community see; http://www.inc.com/winning-workplaces/magazine/201106/where-the-ceo-is-just-another-guy-with-a-vote.html
jabrams
Thanks for the Namaste link, Rodney. Wonderful article, wonderful company. Are you finding, as we are, that more and more companies are looking at the co-op model? And favorably, at that!!
Rodney North
Yes, we do find more companies (specifically small business owners and entrepreneurs) are looking at the co-op model with interest. Further we’re getting more interest from others – like business professors who want to share this model (and the Equal Exchange experience of it) with their students and colleagues. There are actually 4 case studies being written on us right now. They don’t all _focus_ on our co-op structure, but they do include that as an interesting/relevant part of our story.
Lastly, I’d be remiss not to mention that one of those professors, John Whitman, has written a graduate level curriculum on the co-operative business model. He saw that this model is rarely presented to graduate students, hence later in their careers they neither think to “go co-op” nor know what to make of co-ops when they encounter them (say in their work as lawyers, civil servants, city planners, judges, bankers, etc)
The curriculum is free and available online at:
http://cooperative-curriculum.wikispaces.com/
(note: Equal Exchange supported his efforts with a $12,000 grant in 2010)