JohnAbercrombie
Paddler
As EriktheViking points out, it's not MEC (the Co-Op) that's being sold, it's all the assets of MEC .
Since the assets include the membership data (purchase history and name, address, email), inventory, and real estate, there's nothing left to the CoOp.
My thoughts for today:
If there were a legal maneuver that could stop the asset sale, it probably would have been started already.
The governance structure of MEC was set up to allow the Board to do this (dispose of assets). A classic example of: "It seemed like a good idea at the time" ??
I've been a MEC member for about 45 (?) years. I always looked at the list of candidates for Board elections, and I don't ever recall seeing proposals for down-sizing the product offerings or the number of stores or reducing sales volume. It was usually a choice between people who seemed to have some business skills vs 'social activists' . But my memory may well be incorrect.
I wonder how many of the 5 million 'members' are actually active - or even alive?
For me, MEC has been acting like a private corporation (with a better than average refund policy) for 20+ years. It will probablycontinue spiral downward for a couple more years (like Hudson's Bay did, as mentioned above) until it is gone.
Lots of media reports about the MEC asset sale have mentioned COVID and competition from Amazon and Walmart as factors.
Those seem bogus to me. MEC has done a roaring business during COVID and it's hard to imagine anything that Walmart (or amazon) sells that would compete with MEC's offerings.
Did those ideas come from current Board members and executives? Perhaps it's part of a campaign to deflect attention from mis-management in past years.
A quick look at the balance of product offerings on the website, and the (long) list of retail stores will tell a lot about the probable source of difficulties.
It's interesting that REI isn't the purchaser. MEC has been trying to be 'REI lite' from the get-go and has mirrored a lot of the changes at REI.
Since the assets include the membership data (purchase history and name, address, email), inventory, and real estate, there's nothing left to the CoOp.
My thoughts for today:
If there were a legal maneuver that could stop the asset sale, it probably would have been started already.
The governance structure of MEC was set up to allow the Board to do this (dispose of assets). A classic example of: "It seemed like a good idea at the time" ??
I've been a MEC member for about 45 (?) years. I always looked at the list of candidates for Board elections, and I don't ever recall seeing proposals for down-sizing the product offerings or the number of stores or reducing sales volume. It was usually a choice between people who seemed to have some business skills vs 'social activists' . But my memory may well be incorrect.
I wonder how many of the 5 million 'members' are actually active - or even alive?
For me, MEC has been acting like a private corporation (with a better than average refund policy) for 20+ years. It will probably
Lots of media reports about the MEC asset sale have mentioned COVID and competition from Amazon and Walmart as factors.
Those seem bogus to me. MEC has done a roaring business during COVID and it's hard to imagine anything that Walmart (or amazon) sells that would compete with MEC's offerings.
Did those ideas come from current Board members and executives? Perhaps it's part of a campaign to deflect attention from mis-management in past years.
A quick look at the balance of product offerings on the website, and the (long) list of retail stores will tell a lot about the probable source of difficulties.
It's interesting that REI isn't the purchaser. MEC has been trying to be 'REI lite' from the get-go and has mirrored a lot of the changes at REI.