Consumers' co-operative
A consumers' co-operative is an
Consumers' cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers, such as
In some countries, consumers' cooperatives are known as cooperative retail societies or retail co-ops, though they should not be confused with
Consumers' cooperatives may, in turn, form
Consumer cooperation has been a focus of study in the field of
History
Consumer cooperatives rose to prominence during the
The first documented consumer cooperative was founded in 1769,[6] in a barely-furnished cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society.
In the decades that followed, several cooperatives or cooperative societies formed including Lennoxtown Friendly Victualling Society, founded in 1812.[7]
The philosophy that underpinned the cooperative movement stemmed from such
Similar early experiments were made in the early 19th century and by 1830 there were several hundred co-operatives.
Modern movement
The first successful co-operative was the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, established in England in 1844. This became the basis for the development and growth of the modern cooperative movement.[10] As the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution forced more skilled workers into poverty, these tradesmen decided to band together to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford.
With lessons from prior failed attempts at co-operation in mind, they designed the now-famous Rochdale Principles, and over a period of four months they struggled to pool one pound sterling per person for a total of 28 pounds of capital. On December 21, 1844, they opened their store with a very meagre selection of butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and a few candles. Within three months, they expanded their selection to include tea and tobacco, and they were soon known for providing high quality, unadulterated goods.
The
Governance and operation
Consumer cooperatives utilize the cooperative principle of
Large consumers' co-ops are run much like any other business and require workers, managers, clerks, products, and customers to keep the doors open and the business running. In smaller businesses the consumer/owners are often workers as well. Consumers' cooperatives can differ greatly in start up and also in how the co-op is run but to be true to the consumers' cooperative form of business the enterprise should follow the Rochdale Principles.
Finance and approach to capital accumulation
The customers or consumers of the goods and/or services the cooperative provides are often also the individuals who have provided the capital required to launch or purchase that enterprise.
The major difference between consumers' cooperatives and other forms of business is that the purpose of a consumers' cooperative association is to provide quality goods and services at the lowest cost to the consumer/owners rather than to sell goods and services at the highest price above cost that the consumer is willing to pay.[citation needed] In practice consumers' cooperatives price goods and services at competitive market rates.[citation needed]
Where a for-profit enterprise will treat the difference between cost (including labor etc.) and selling price as financial gain for investors, the consumer owned enterprise may retain this to accumulate capital in common ownership, distribute it to meet the consumer's social objectives, or refund this sum to the consumer/owner as an over-payment. (Accumulated capital may be held as reserves, or invested in growth as working capital or the purchase of capital assets such as plant and buildings.)
While some claim that surplus payment returns to consumer/owner patrons should be taxed the same as dividends paid to corporate stock holders,[11] others argue that consumer cooperatives do not return a profit by traditional definition, and similar tax standards do not apply.[12]
Problems
Since consumer cooperatives are run democratically, they are subject to the same problems typical of democratic government.[
Pursuit of social goals
Many advocates of the formation of consumer cooperatives—from a variety of political perspectives—have seen them as integral to the achievement of wider social goals.
For example, the founding document of the
That as soon as practicable, this society shall proceed to arrange the powers of production, distribution, education, and government, or in other words to establish a selfsupporting home-colony of united interests, or assist other societies in establishing such colonies.[10]
Examples
Europe
One of the world's largest consumer co-operative federations operates in the UK as
In Switzerland, the two largest supermarket chains Coop and Migros are both co-operatives and are among the country’s largest employers.
In
In
In
In
In France, Coop Atlantique owns 7 hypermarkets, 39 supermarkets, and about 200 convenience stores.
In Germany, the ReWe Group is a diversified holding company of consumer cooperatives that includes thousands of retail stores, discount stores, and tourism agencies. It ranks as the second largest supermarket chain in Germany and in the top ten cooperative groups in the world.[17]
In Spain,
Australia
The Co-op Bookshop sold textbooks both online and on university campuses. It also owned Australian Geographic. In 2020 its retail stores closed and its online store was sold to Booktopia.[18]
The Wine Society (Australian Wine Consumers’ Co-operative Society Limited), established in 1946, now has more than 58,000 members. It sources and sells premium wines under the Society label, runs comprehensive wine education courses, and recognises excellence from young winemakers.
Bank Australia was formed in 2011 as the Members and Education Credit Union. It changed its name to Bank Australia in 2015. The bank is wholly owned by its customers, reported[who?] at 125,000 in 2012.
Japan
Japan has a large and well-developed consumer cooperative movement with more than 14 million members. Retail co-ops alone had a combined turnover of 2.5 trillion Yen (21 billion U.S. Dollars) in April, 2003.[19] Co-op Kobe (コープこうべ) in the Hyōgo Prefecture is the largest retail cooperative in Japan and, with more than 1.2 million members, is one of the largest cooperatives in the world. In addition to retail co-ops there are medical, housing, and insurance co-ops alongside institutional (workplace based) co-ops, co-ops for school teachers, and university-based co-ops.
Approximately one in five of all Japanese households belongs to a local retail co-op and 90% of all co-op members are women.
Some of co-op organisations, for example, in
North America
In the United States, the
Seattle-based
Outdoor retailer Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) in Canada was one of that country's major consumer cooperatives. In the Canadian Prairie provinces as well as British Columbia,[25] gas stations, lumberyards, and grocery stores can be found under the Co-Op brand.
All credit unions in the United States and Canada are financial cooperatives.[26] Tim Worstall has called the Vanguard Group a customer owned cooperative, since the owners of Vanguard funds are the funds' investors.[27]
Caribbean
In
See also
- Food cooperative, a supermarket owned and operated by its consumers.
- Copyleft
- GNU General Public License
- Health food store
- Healthcare Co-operatives movement in India
- National Cooperative Business Association
- Open source
- Open-source hardware
- US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
Notes
- ^ Euro Coop. "Consumer Co-operatives: Democracy - Development - Employment" (PDF). p. 4. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-25. Retrieved 2011-06-07.
- ^ Warbasse, James Peter (1950). Cooperative Peace. Archived from the original on 2014-10-20.
- ISBN 0-13-063085-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link - ISBN 1-116-75261-1. Archivedfrom the original on 2008-05-20.
- ^ Adams, Frank and Gary Hansen (1993) Putting Democracy To Work: A Practical Guide for Starting and Managing Worker-Owned Businesses, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, San Francisco
- ^ Fairbairn, Brett. "The Meaning of Rochdale" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-11.
- ^ Lennoxtown (Local History) Archived 2007-03-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Doug Peacock. "Social strife: The birth of the co-op". Cotton Times, understanding the industrial revolution. p. 2. Archived from the original on 2008-07-25. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
- ^ The Co-operator. 1828.
- ^ a b Thompson, David (July–August 1994). "Co-op Principles: Then and Now". Cooperative Grocer. Archived from the original on 2011-07-18.
- ^ "The Farmer Takes a Town". Time. December 25, 1944. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.
- ^ "Attacks Splutter" (DjVu). CO-OP Magazine. January 1946: 17. Archived from the original on 2011-07-18.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Warbasse, James Peter (1942). "Problems of Cooperation". Archived from the original on 2008-05-20.
- ^ "What Consumers' Cooperation does". Cooperation. May 1934. Archived from the original on 2008-05-20.
- ^ "View the top 300 co-operatives from around the world". 4 February 2014. Archived from the original on 2015-05-17. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
- ^ Retailing in Finland. London, UK: Euromonitor International. October 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-08-14. Retrieved 2007-06-28.
- TheGuardian.com. 4 January 2012.
- ^ Bonyhady, Nick (2020-01-30). "Co-op bookshop to disappear from university campuses". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2020-08-30.
- ^ a b Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union., 2003
- ^ Takamura, 1995
- ^ Tokyo Seikatusha Network Official Site Archived 2014-06-04 at the Wayback Machine (in Japanese)
- ^ Kanagawa Network Movement Official Site Archived 2014-05-17 at the Wayback Machine (in Japanese)
- ^ "Food Co-ops and Associates - Co-op Grocer Network". cooperativegrocer.coop. Archived from the original on 15 June 2017. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
- ^ "REI: Financial Information | REI Co-op". Archived from the original on 2014-09-26. Retrieved 2014-09-02.; see: 2012 Audited Financial Statements, pg 13, sec 14
- ^ "Consumer Co-op Archives - BC Coop Association". BC Coop Association. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
- ^ "The Credit Union Movement: Origins and Development 1850 to 1980" by J. Carroll Moody and Gilbert Fite
- ^ Worstall, Tim. "Memo For Bernie: World's Second Largest Investor, Vanguard, Is Socialist". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-08-07.
Further reading
- Co-operation 1921-1947, published monthly by The Co-operative League of America. fully searchable original link
- The History of Co-operation, by George Jacob Holyoake, 1908. fully searchable original link
- Why Co-ops? What Are They? How Do They Work? A pamphlet from the G.I. Roundtable series by Joseph G. Knapp, 1944
- Law of Cooperatives, by Legal Firm Stoel Rives, Seattle
External links
- Cooperatives Europe – The common platform of ICA Europe and the Coordinating Committee of European Cooperative Associations (CCACE)
- International Co-operative Alliance
- Consumer Cooperatives Worldwide (sector of ICA)
- Co-operatives UK, the central organisation for all UK co-operative enterprises
- The online database of UK Co-operatives
- ICOS, the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society
- German technical consulting for optimization
- The ICA Group, technical advice for cooperative start-ups in the USA.
- English website from the Japanese Consumer Co-operative Union.
- A new approach to cooperative understanding
- University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives
- Coopnet Update paper and event database
- Dissecting Healthcare Co-op
- Background Paper on Co-operatives
- Brazda&Schediwy (ed.) Comparative International Study, 1989