From Maine’s Portland Press Herald: NORTHPORT — In 1992, Susanne Ward and her husband, Patrick Reilley, founded Second Read Books and Coffee, Maine’s first espresso bar-bookstore. Rockland’s Main Street was a highly unlikely place for the two entrepreneurs to choose at that time, as the city was struggling with a collapsing fishing industry and many […]
From Beneficial State Bank: Linda and Gregory Coles founded their preschool, A Child’s Place, in their Queens, NY basement in 1983. Over the years it grew steadily and developed a deeply loyal community. Now they own a large building, employ more than 50 people and serve hundreds of families. Former students bring their own kids to […]
From Nonprofit Quarterly: At NPQ, we have written about the growing prominence of employee ownership, but mostly from the perspective of the value of preserving businesses and jobs in the community. Still, these community benefits will only be realized if business owners agree to sell to their employees. So, what would drive a business owner to do […]
From Entrepreneur: Baby boomers own about half of all privately-held companies with employees in the United States. The 2.4 million business owners who belong to this aging demographic (one-third of whom have already passed 65) will need to develop sound and sensible exit strategies. As they look to the future, there is an elegant solution […]
From Forbes: Project Equity approached Kline and the City of Fremont with a plan to both understand the threat they faced with ageing business owners and also to help get the word out that there that employee ownership could be a viable succession plan for them. “We talk to a lot of businesses to try […]
From Fast Company: If you work at a textile or furniture factory in Western North Carolina, you probably don’t belong to a union; the region usually ranks as the least unionized part of the United States. But a growing number of companies in the area, which includes the city of Asheville and smaller Appalachian towns, […]
From the Detroit Free Press: We’ve known for a long time that baby boomers are hitting retirement age. Those retirements will drain from the workforce a vast amount of skills and experience. But the loss to the workforce may go beyond the loss of the boomers themselves. Since a huge number of privately held companies […]
From the Weekly Alibi (pdf): Winning Coffee Co. has been an Albuquerque establishment for 20 years. It’s a daily routine for students, professors, street folks, laptop nomads and newspaper-reading, life-advice-giving old townies. It’s home to a regular pop-up bookshop (Bradley’s Books), a rotating gallery that features local artists, a punk rock open mic night, countless local […]
From Maine Public Radio: For many people, when they hear the term ‘co-op’ they think of the local food store or maybe one of the lobster co-ops that dot the coast. But Maine has co-ops of all sizes and types in the retail, agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, housing, financial services and other sectors. October is Co-op […]
From the Akron Beacon Journal: After 88 years, Buehler’s Fresh Foods soon will no longer be owned by the founding family. But the new owners are extremely familiar with the grocery stores. The 13 supermarkets are being sold to the company’s eligible employees through an employee stock ownership program, or ESOP. A new company named […]