From Next City:

It was a real struggle for Red Emma’s the first time they were looking to finance a new, larger location for their bookstore and café space. What began as a small bookshop in 2004, with a vision of building infrastructure for communities centered on solidarity, was taking off. By 2013, Red Emma’s had outgrown its original location, but because it is a worker cooperative, most financing entities didn’t know how to engage. “Nobody would take a chance on us because they didn’t understand what we were,” says Kate Khatib, one of Red Emma’s founding worker-owners.

Get the full story here:

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/baltimore-worker-cooperative-continues-expanding-and-evolving