Made by a Coop
Prof Wolff once mentioned - "Imagine if the shirts / pants / products had tags that didn't say "Made in china, thailand, etc.. " but said "Made by a Coop". Then awareness among consumers increases, at-least they become curious and informed purchases can be made.
In this context, a worker owned e-commerce portal selling only worker coop products can be a start. Along with selling worker coop products, useful information about why to buy from a coop, how coops are better, etc can be put up on the website. Basically the plan is to setup a website that educates the buyer and also uses consumer action to encourage coops.
John Rhoads Sun 18 Dec 2016 6:15PM
My vision is coop made goods and services that embody "green" practices. Secondly, an emphasis on "local" where a dollar spent in the community stays in the community vs. going somewhere else never to return.
To be specific, what I use to determine what products to focus on would be whatever I find in my community that I use on a day to day basis. For example, when I go out shopping I try and see everything I buy through the lens of locally made/coop made. Think of how most everything (if not all) you need in life could be sourced locally. Some things like auto fuel can be transitioned from fossil fuel to bio-fuel and then ultimately to electric. The trick is to get off the 12,000 mile supply chain while enriching the local economy. As far as "first", I think it may boil down to what is most important for daily living while being locally coop made. This is a tall order but I suppose you are right in that we start to take inventory of what it is we need most and build out from there.
I started a website as a Petri dish of sorts to address this at http://coopeden.zohosites.com. As I got further into it I noticed that what we need goes far beyond building coops to building (or re-building as the case may be) communities in general.
Matthew Andrews (Massachusetts, delegate) Wed 28 Dec 2016 11:44PM
There is a website www.unionlabel.com for union made products. Unfortunately, I wouldn't call it a model to copy. The website looks like a very old design and they plaster American flags everywhere. I'd amend the proposal to include union shops. They are on the spectrum of workplace democracy and ought to be included, but not just ones from the United States obviously.
Andrew Halls · Sun 18 Dec 2016 8:38AM
I'm interested in working on this project.
In response to the suggestion "Recommend No selling only connecting people " I think there are several sites our there that do this, at the organizational level. For example https://usworker.coop/member-directory/
I think something that takes a product catalog approach might make this different.
I like the idea of creating it as business. Organized as a Worker Owned Co-Op. That actually sells stuff, creating a revenue stream. I think we could get started with only a few products.
What products would we focus on first ? How do we find them?