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Can anyone shed more light on why it takes 7-10 years to get to an actual store? In my head you’d start signing up suppliers / farmers, find a suitable place t

Can anyone shed more light on why it takes 7-10 years to get to an actual store? In my head you’d start signing up suppliers / farmers, find a suitable place to rent, get some more funding, build out the store, hire, and start it up. What makes it slower than other businesses?

sct202 4y ago
There's a long capital raising period where the co-op will need to raise a substantial amount of capital in the form or preferred shares and owner loans. The co op near me says they need a certain percentage of capital to come from owners in order to secure commercial loans, and they've recently completed raising capital after signing up owners for the last 9 years.
Kalium 4y ago
Coops often find it harder to borrow and they cannot sell equity. This makes the every "get some funding" step harder than it sounds. Going over the list I see a lot of people-organizing and community-outreach efforts. These are definitely going to be more time-intensive than setting up an LLC owned by a single person and running with that.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Why can't they sell equity? I live in a housing coop, and they do sell equity. I own 100 shares.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The amounts they need are high. They’re trying to get 1000 people to kick in $100 so they can get a multimillion dollar loan. Trying to get that is hard enough, getting them to kick in 3-4K each is nearly impossible, even if you can sell “shares”.
  - Kalium 4y ago
    My apologies, I can see I was not nearly specific enough. In addition to needing to sell a lot of equity to get enough money, coops generally cannot sell equity to outside parties through general-purpose capital markets to raise funds. Living in a housing coop, you can buy shares as a resident-owner. I would guess your coop does not have many investor-owners who own shares while not living in the housing coop. Does this clarify my point for you?

sct202 4y ago

There's a long capital raising period where the co-op will need to raise a substantial amount of capital in the form or preferred shares and owner loans. The co op near me says they need a certain percentage of capital to come from owners in order to secure commercial loans, and they've recently completed raising capital after signing up owners for the last 9 years.

Kalium 4y ago

Coops often find it harder to borrow and they cannot sell equity. This makes the every "get some funding" step harder than it sounds. Going over the list I see a lot of people-organizing and community-outreach efforts. These are definitely going to be more time-intensive than setting up an LLC owned by a single person and running with that.

luckylion 4y ago
Why can't they sell equity? I live in a housing coop, and they do sell equity. I own 100 shares.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The amounts they need are high. They’re trying to get 1000 people to kick in $100 so they can get a multimillion dollar loan. Trying to get that is hard enough, getting them to kick in 3-4K each is nearly impossible, even if you can sell “shares”.
- Kalium 4y ago
  My apologies, I can see I was not nearly specific enough. In addition to needing to sell a lot of equity to get enough money, coops generally cannot sell equity to outside parties through general-purpose capital markets to raise funds. Living in a housing coop, you can buy shares as a resident-owner. I would guess your coop does not have many investor-owners who own shares while not living in the housing coop. Does this clarify my point for you?