Federated retail

About

The distributed co-op is a business concept intended to serve the following goals:

• increasing local autonomy
• increasing economic resiliency, especially on a local level
• starving the corporate beast

The idea is to provide resources for certain types of less-privileged businesses to be able to better compete against larger businesses using more exploitative practices.

Qualifications

The types of businesses this concept would aim to support would include:

• businesses whose practices are sustainable or encourage sustainability (primary goal)
• businesses who do a substantial amount of business locally (because this promotes local autonomy and resiliency)
• businesses who seek to minimize their dependency on businesses that do not meet these qualififcations

Resources

web site

The initial resource to get this network off the ground would be an online database and web site that would serve as an interface between the various entities (buyers and sellers) in the network:

• sellers (whether businesses or not) could enter in lists of items they have for sale
• customers could enter shopping lists (which could be anything), and the web site would let them know where it is available. (The site could even plan a shopping trip to minimize travel distance, expense, etc.)

computer help

Member businesses would receive assistance, to the extent that resources are available, with:

• connecting their inventory systems to the online database
• systematizing and streamlining their inventory and ordering processes

other benefits

Members would probably offer each other discounts, knowing that they are all serving some common goals that benefit everyone.

preliminary guidelines

• There would be no rigid distinction between "buyers" and "sellers"; anyone in the network can be either, at any time.
• There would be no fixed membership fee; the means for gathering resources needed to keep the network running and healthy would be decided on in a democratic way. This could be a transaction fee or percentage that would be adjusted regularly by popular vote, voluntary contributions from individual buyers and sellers in exchange for name recognition or advertising, or by any other method the members decide upon at any given time.