https://fb.watch/DVAZnlfS5Z/?mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

[Margaret (Margie) Smith]

If you can look at FaceBook : this is about an old community store that later became a coop 

https://fb.watch/DVAZnlfS5Z/?mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

[Chris Wright]

Beautiful, Margie--thanks for sharing this.

Marrowstone Island is an hour and a half from my house in Union, WA. I plan to visit the Co-op when I'm up there over the holidays.

Friends, this is what our little store can be. It's going to take money, time, labor, materials and lots of love, but after seeing the enthusiasm and involvement over the last two months since we started talking about it, I'm convinced we can make this happen.

Chris

[Michael Evenson]

Some facts to consider:

Anyone have our profile?

Michael

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[Cb Solo]

If one goes a little deeper and looks beyond the city limits of Morrowstone, (A good exercise  would be to lookup Marrowstone in Google Earth.) the income level and average age goes up. You need a solid base of people that can afford the membership (subscription?) fee, and more importantly, afford to buy there. There is a reason why Groc Out, WinCo, et. al. are affordable, scales of economy. It's my guess that the total sales of the Marrowstone store would be the amount of shrinkage of WinCo.

Charlie Solo 

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[Chris Wright]

Good points, Michael and Charlie.

We know the valley residents alone aren’t enough to keep the store thriving based on its current products and services, but Denise has told us that the summer visitors are a major source of revenue that augment the spending by locals the rest of the year and help carry the offseason. And a major focus needs to be on affordable essentials and the ability for customers to use EBT, so people aren’t compelled to spend both time and money on going into town for Winco and GrocOut. 

Chris

[Michael Evenson]

My reason for looking into the Marrowstone community base was to see where it got its initial funding from.  They, too, asked for a $250 founder’s share.  They had a lot of people taking shares - many more than we have.  

That led me to contemplate how to bring in the starting capital needed.  It’s going to have to come from outside the valley unless there are some people willing to invest substantial money.

Keeping it going once we have the coop store running is a different issue.  It doesn’t seem as daunting a task as coming up with the capital to purchase both the business and the property.

Michael

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