Richard D. Wolff

Hi Professor Wolff, I am a Managing Director of an Electrical Wholesale Company here in New Zealand. We sell electrical products to electricians mostly small businesses. After watching your RT interview talking about the solution to our broken economy is changing our business structure from the bottom up, I wish to try the co-op business model. To give you an idea of the how we work, My business partner has a family business in China that manufactures our products, these are then imported to us and we then sell these to our independent electricians at a wholesale rate (30% less then RRP) giving them a 30% margin they can make on the items for themselves. Our RRP is 1/3 the cost of our major opposition, so our customers always get a fair price if they purchase from us directly or from our customers (electricians). My idea is to incorporate these independant electricians into a unified labour workforce under a co-op that serves there interests and paves the way for all of us to obtain bigger contracts that the big corporations usually get. So, my question is...If our production is a capitalist model, our distribution is co-op and the independant contractor is a capialist business model would creating an co-op in the sense work? I have been unable to find anyone here in New Zealand that has done this type of business model before, so this is why I'm asking yourself and anyone else wishing to comment on what practical steps would be required to create such a business model that I can implement from a theory to reality. You thoughts and/or suggestions would be a god sent. Cheers, Dan.