Word: cooped
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Alice Knox '19 probably swears by the Harvard Cooperative Society. At 84, she is the oldest employee of what is more commonly referred to by patrons as the "Coop," the oldest and probably the most respected college retail cooperative in the country. The Coop celebrated its 100th anniversary last spring, and Knox has worked in its book department for more than half its existence. A warm, down-to-earth woman, she bubbles with enthusiasm, fond memories, and evident pride when discussing the Harvard Square institution that is only 16 years her senior. "I don't know anybody who works harder...
...Coop is a family no longer. The whir of modernization has transformed the store in ways Knox scarcely could have imagined when she entered the operation in 1925--and, what's more, in ways that would have appeared utterly alien to the cooperative's motley founders some 50 years earlier. It has grown from "a shelf or two in what was chiefly a fruit store" (as one historian puts it) to a multi-million dollar diversified retail business with six branches around the Boston area. Throughout the school year and summer, students, alumni and faculty of Harvard...
...merchants for books and wood Supported strongly by the Crimson and the nowdefur 'Echo, as well as several influential faculty members, Kip and four of his classmates enlisted about 400 Harvard-affiliated persons to invest in the cooperative at two dollars a head and opened the "Society"--the nickname, "Coop," didn't catch on for several months--for business at 13 Harvard Row (next to Church Street). The stock of the new store was meager; according to an early history of the Coop by former Business School professor N.S.B. Gras, it offered only "stationery and some second-hand books...
...venture took hold, however. In its first year, the Coop notched nearly $14,000 in sales and, according to Gras, saved members (the only people eligible then to shop there) $4,500 through sharply reduced prices. Despite some early financial near-disasters and several location changes, the cooperative grew steadily, in 1924 finally moving to a four-story red-brick building at its current location in Harvard Square. In due time, the Coop began distributing profits to members in year-ending patronage rebates, a practice which continues today. By 1925, sales had passed the $1 million mark, membership had topped...
...Coop's early success--and to today's success as well, say current members of the Board of Directors--is simply good business management. To curb a spendthrift Harvard community, the original student founders mandated in the constitution that payment for goods be in cash only. The cash-only requirement has since changed--as any undergraduate carrying that all-important red plastic well knows--but the same keen business sense still permeates the operation...