Discussion summary
A project has compiled a searchable directory of over 22,000 products from worker-owned co-ops by scraping around 60 stores. The initiative aims to facilitate ethical purchasing, though discussions highlight challenges like verification and user experience.
What the discussion says
- Supporters praise the project for making worker co-op products accessible.
- Some question the ethics and verification of worker-owned status.
- Concerns about technical issues like mobile usability are raised.
“Made them searchable from ~60 co-op stores.”
“Very cool! I've submitted a co-op.”
Comments
Hacker News
Does WinCo Foods count? https://www.wincofoods.com/employee-owned
by williadc
Terrific idea. I agree with daheza. Location search would be an awesome feature. The site is blazing fast. Great work. Keep it up.
by benonsocial
Nice site! Maybe add link correction? Sometimes I found myself going to sites and though target landing page was wrong or out-of-date, surfing the site a bit, found similar or same product still offered. Would have to have some way of trusting / verifying the corrections but some people would find it satisfying to offer fix the bad links I bet.
I wonder of there is a version of this but for jobs?
by LPisGood
I read this post while sitting at Broken Clock Brewing here in Minneapolis, one of the 13 listed and my favorite brewery. There are actually 2 in my city. I actually picked up an ownership card and anyone can buy in for $200, but dividends don't start to pay out until some indefinite point where the voting owners decide the business can sustain it.
by eleventen
Very nice and appreciate the effort you put into making this.
Some Improvements that could help: the location search could be an actual map with pins which would be easier to use some kind of tags for the different appareal items would help clarify which one, currently i have to click and search each vendor for things im looking for. Specifically autistic friendly / sensory clothing items.
by daheza
Curious that you include REI. It's a retail coop model, not a worker-owned coop.
Apropos: the way they ended the REI Adventures program is behavior consistent with a normal big-box chain. That is, announce the end simultaneously to their customers and REI's partner adventure companies, provide refunds to customers, but don't forward the relevant same customer info to the partners for rebooking because that's REI's proprietary data.
If that's also behavior consistent with a worker-owned coop, I have to ask: what is the social benefit of worker-owned over a normal corporate structure? And if it's not, why point the user to REI for a pair of hiking shorts?
by jancsika
Neat project and I love the motivations behind it.
A few friendly recommendations:
• The images on the results pages are in desperate need of optimization. Plenty of 500KB+ thumbnails and even a couple 2MB+ thumbnails I saw in there. Could easily be optimized 90%+ with no loss of quality
• The instant live search can be a little distracting, particularly paired with the heavy loading of the thumbnails
• I know you don't want to create your own full ecomm site, but even just a hover PDP without having to click off could be nice, if you could pull in the key product details. I know the goal is to support the destination sites but it was a lot of back and forth to me
• Any ability to validate that a product is available vs sold out (and note that on the results pages) would be appreciated. Probably 75% of the items I checked on ttgaming.quest were sold out. A banner across items not in stock would be helpful. Or a filter on the search results page.
Keep up the good work!
by robot_jesus
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- Hacker News
- Does WinCo Foods count? https://www.wincofoods.com/employee-ownedby williadc
- Terrific idea. I agree with daheza. Location search would be an awesome feature. The site is blazing fast. Great work. Keep it up.by benonsocial
- Nice site! Maybe add link correction? Sometimes I found myself going to sites and though target landing page was wrong or out-of-date, surfing the site a bit, found similar or same product still offered. Would have to have some way of trusting / verifying the corrections but some people would find it satisfying to offer fix the bad links I bet.
- I wonder of there is a version of this but for jobs?by LPisGood
- I read this post while sitting at Broken Clock Brewing here in Minneapolis, one of the 13 listed and my favorite brewery. There are actually 2 in my city. I actually picked up an ownership card and anyone can buy in for $200, but dividends don't start to pay out until some indefinite point where the voting owners decide the business can sustain it.by eleventen
- Very nice and appreciate the effort you put into making this.
Some Improvements that could help: the location search could be an actual map with pins which would be easier to use some kind of tags for the different appareal items would help clarify which one, currently i have to click and search each vendor for things im looking for. Specifically autistic friendly / sensory clothing items.
by daheza - Curious that you include REI. It's a retail coop model, not a worker-owned coop.
Apropos: the way they ended the REI Adventures program is behavior consistent with a normal big-box chain. That is, announce the end simultaneously to their customers and REI's partner adventure companies, provide refunds to customers, but don't forward the relevant same customer info to the partners for rebooking because that's REI's proprietary data.
If that's also behavior consistent with a worker-owned coop, I have to ask: what is the social benefit of worker-owned over a normal corporate structure? And if it's not, why point the user to REI for a pair of hiking shorts?
by jancsika - Neat project and I love the motivations behind it.
A few friendly recommendations:
• The images on the results pages are in desperate need of optimization. Plenty of 500KB+ thumbnails and even a couple 2MB+ thumbnails I saw in there. Could easily be optimized 90%+ with no loss of quality
• The instant live search can be a little distracting, particularly paired with the heavy loading of the thumbnails
• I know you don't want to create your own full ecomm site, but even just a hover PDP without having to click off could be nice, if you could pull in the key product details. I know the goal is to support the destination sites but it was a lot of back and forth to me
• Any ability to validate that a product is available vs sold out (and note that on the results pages) would be appreciated. Probably 75% of the items I checked on ttgaming.quest were sold out. A banner across items not in stock would be helpful. Or a filter on the search results page.
Keep up the good work!
by robot_jesus