Shire Co-op org mtg - 22Jan'11

[jaqeboy]

We made huge progress at the last meeting and chose Associated Buyers as our first supplier. We've applied to become a buying club and should be all set up by the time of the meeting. We've gotten a .pdf copy of their January 2011 catalog and will upload that soon. All details of our progress are on this temporary site: http://AltExpo.org/co-op.

We've set an "early bird" membership fee of $10 and we'll evaluate that as we go on. We've got our own domain name now and a webmaster, but we've got to figure out what the design should be like and what the content will be first, but look for us at shireco-op.com.

Next meeting: Saturday, 22 January, 2011

3PM - Introduction to Co-operatives talk for anyone with questions before going into the business meeting.

4PM - Business meeting: join, review Associated's products, prepare our first order, consider new business, including our web site and future products to carry.

Location: Liberty Books
75 Allison Street
Concord
223-0335

[jaqeboy]

Just a note on the operations of the Shire Co-op now:

Anyone can attend the 3PM Intro to Co-ops meeting and decide whether they want to join at that meeting.

Anyone can attend the 4PM business meeting, but only members can vote on issues and only members can order jointly with other co-op members.

See you at Liberty Books Saturday.

[jaqeboy]

Here's a link to the Associated Buyers January 2011 catalog that we'll be ordering from: http://shireco-op.com/AssocBuyersCatalogJan2011.pdf

There are a few policies and procedures that Dan'll review with us at the meeting (I think those may be all printed in the catalog, too) and I hope our account is completely set up with them so we can go ahead and order at the meeting. We have a $350 minimum order, but with 14 people at the last meeting, we should easily come up with that order size. We should have one paper catalog at the meeting, too, that can be handed around (No one likes to print paper anymore, just .pdf's - they actually charge a subscription fee if you want to get monthly paper catalogs).

Here's a suggestion for preparing to order. Look around the house to see things that you're out of or are low on. This can include personal care products like toothpaste, shampoo, bath soap, etc. or cleaning products. Make a list of all these things (saves time at the meeting). Review the .pdf catalog to see what items they have there and make up a list of what you'd ideally order. I would typically come up with over $300 worth of items in the past. Then, you see which items are on sale in the catalog that you want - definitely order those. Then keep adding the other items from your list 'til it comes up to your budgeted amount that you can afford to order.

At the meeting, we'll probably have bulk items we'd like to split, say 50# of wheat berries. We'll have a little back and forth about who's buying how much of what out of a split item. Then on delivery day, you'll have to bring bags or containers for your portion and we'll have to bring a scale.

This is going to be a fun meeting. There's also some discussion area at the Shire Co-op page for more back and forth. We have a domain name now: shireco-op.com and a webmaster, so maybe the members discussion will move over to that site. We'll see how we progress.