alternatives to co-ops

I like the idea of "member vendor co-ops," regardless of whether or not we manage to resurrect the co-op forum.

We'd have to give some thought as to the best way to handle the "noncompete" issue... I don't see limiting it quite so strictly, maybe just waiting until ordering is closed or participants' list is filled before posting a new co-op for similar items? I think I have seen simultaneous co-ops on the old forum... often, sizes and varieties and delivery zones are different even if you have two co-ops for, say, lily bulbs... so I'm not sure we'd need to say "only one lily bulb co-op at a time."

Excellent points...and if some form of this could be hammered out, it could legitimize the vendors, which would eliminate them from selling in the alleys so to speak.

It would give customers direct communication with the vendor and let Dave off the hook for most of the gripes.

It is a well thought out alternative that could be worked with.

Critter maybe having member vendor dmail exisiting vendor and sya have ya ya go tall yoru orders and yoru money. That way nobody coudl back out on first vendor. Once a person pays they paid and no refunds unless product bad. In other words onc e they sign on one coop they on it regardles s of what happens on other one.

Woudl mean vendors woudl only have to make sure they check othe rvendors first before they post their interest thread

Looks like there could be some hope...great idea starlight!! You are working overtime girlfriend.

I trying but need somebody else to either expand or find fault with it. It was just an idea and even I don't have all the kinks out of it.

I think the best suggestion to date was the one with very simple statements followed by
I accept I decline

etc

etc

We hopefully are all legally adults participating in these group buys. Group pressure works the best. Also gossip takes 2 a talker and a listener---don't participate!
I hate the term "police", so I will simply say we should certainly be able to use pear pressure and encouragement to get the appropriate responses.

M 2 cents worth
wing waves to ya,
Sheri

But not all vendors are willing to sell directly to members. We have hosts who collect the money, buy, receive and ship the products. What would happen to the non-vendor co-ops?

Birdie I tend to agree with the peer pressure thing. It works wonders. I know it can be hard though, if someone is 'acting up" and they are a good friend....it's hard to tell them to simmer down. I just hope we can all be on our best behavior and hopefully this won't come up again

Ahhhhh haven't thought that far dbsmith. I have an idea and gonna try and get it fined tune d and then see what Dave and Terry think first.

Need to dmail some folks for advice and help first and talk to some of th efolsk onhere that have said they have some mgt and other experiences.

Vendor issues may end up being easier to deal with by finding an alternative to the current co-op forum rather than trying to regulate it.

I think it might be confusing to try to do co-op opportunities in the same forum as "regular" classifieds. But if Dave were to create a forum similar to Classifieds for "group purchase opportunites" or some such, that might work out well. I'm envisioning a forum where there's a charge to post as with Classifieds, but preferable with threads permitted rather than single posts, and which (like Classifieds) would be an exception to the AUP rule against self-promotion.

However, we'd have to be very clear about which ads should go on which forum.

The way I see it, a "group purchase opportunity" would be limited to DG members and would involve some sort of minimum quantity (either for each item offered or for the total purchase price) that must be met in order for the discount to apply. They could either be set up with shipping to a host and reshipping to the participants, or they could be set up (including being offered directly by a member-vendor acting as host) with shipping directly from the vendor.

Sales announced on the regular Classifed forum would include sales offered to the general public, which the vendor would like to publicize on DG. Sales of individual items by non-vendors would also still remain on this forum.

Thinking about it, it seems the question would be: Where would it be appropriate to advertise a DG-members-only discount, with no required totals to meet, such as a member-vendor might want to offer to fellow members?

Creating a separate forum for "group purchase opportunites" (where posting costs money, just like a classified ad) seems to me like a simple way to go.

?

Finding a way for the group purchases to operate is a very productive avenue.

DG has a huge amount of buying clout and vendors who have a structured way to access us should be quite pleased with the results.

"If you build it, they will come"

It may take a while for large numbers to see the advantages, but with a system in place that allows vendors to offer their products to us as a group, they should line up for the opportunity in time.

Using the Classifieds in some form is a good start to legitimize them.

Would admin consider the creation of a separate forum for group purchases, or would that produce more confusion than it prevented?

I was also thinking of Starlight's concern that co-op ads might swamp classified ads from individuals or small vendors.

I agree that this route seems to be the best option and has the best potential to succeed. I am really liking where this is going! :)

My poor brain and fingers. I thought and thought and think I may have foudn a good solution based on my above post. It took me five hours and pages of typing, but maybe there be somethign good in there that Dave and admids can work with.

It way to long to post on here, will let Admid look at it and if they find some good point s they can post them on here or another thread or aks me to post it for discussion about it and then everybody can input thoughts on it.

Now with 30 cups of coffe e in me gonna re-read the regular coop threa dagain for some ssolutions, most topic scovered so should be a short posts.

*big hugs* and wish I had fresh chocolate chip cookies or something to send you to go with all that coffee! Thank you so much for your efforts with this, Starlight!

I haven't completely read this thread before now. There are many good ideas presented here.

I'm compelled to post here because I hope it may prevent some unpleasantness later on. Even though we often don't think of it as such, DG is an emerchant. The membership and the site traffic are two of DG's most valuable commodities. Anything that takes members and traffic away from the site are not in DG's best interest.

With all of the investments DG has made in these commodities, they have no incentive to give them away or to let any of their systems be used to launch an enterprise that would diminish either the membership or the traffic. Even though they have said that they would allow ads to be placed in classifieds to announce coops on an outside venue, should those coops start to drain traffic, they may change this priviledge.

In order to protect their interests, DG really does want to find a good solution. However none of us should expect to be able to use their investments and resources, such as Dmail to aid in something that may eventually become a competitor.

To any member who is busy investing time and possibly money in developing a coop website, please stop and think about this, before proceeding further. I don't want to be a killjoy, but also don't want to see anyone get hurt.

From Dave's initial posts when the forum was closed, it seemed like he would much rather see co-op "traffic" go to another site than deal with it here. If the other site starts offering lots of additional gardening stuff, essentially setting itself up as a rival to DG, that might be a different issue. He did say linking to a Yahoo group wasn't an option, perhaps because that's a directly competing website (I haven't done much with Yahoo, so I have no idea how many gardening groups might be on it).

I would like to see regional plant co-ops. The folks in zones 8 - 10 have a totally different planting season to work with. We find it a big waste of money and effort to end up having plants shipped to us in the middle of July as it is our hot burn-out time of the year.

The biggest retail nursery sales weekend up north is Mother's Day. Our retail sales season and our planting season have pretty much ended way before then.

Hard goods and bulbs don't pose much of a seasonal challenger here though :~)

I disagree, I buy lots of items that are not suitable for my zone... so if they are split up... I'd have to surf thru all the different forums to find stuff I might be interested in (I just love pushing the zones! lol)

as for a seperate website. I too understood from Dave that it would be okay to set that up as an alternative place to hold co-ops and if the host is paying the advertising fee, its no different than any other nursery posting an add to their sales...etc. but maybe I interpreted the comment wrong?

Hosts supply what they themselves want, so Maggie, I would get together with some folks from your area and see if someone wants to host one....

Hey, 1AnjL, it's not whether a plant is rated for our zones, we all know we can try anything and most of us do :~)

The problem lies in getting plants shipped in during the absolute hottest time of the year here. I mean HOT. If the plants survive the shipping in June and July they usually don't survive much longer. We're talking plugs, not robust one-gallon size plants.

We need our plant material shipped in January, February and March - no later than mid-April. Most plant co-ops are geared more toward shipping starting in April and going on through June and July. That's OK for folks in the cooler north but not for us here in the Sunbelt.

Here's a link to a chart that shows the average temps by month, the chart is at the bottom of the page: http://www.idcide.com/weather/tx/longview.htm Keep in mind that's a mean temp for each month - Texas weather is so variable. That's why there's a saying here "If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes" LOL!

Yeah Fairy, that's what we're talking about for all of us 'down here' :~) There are several wholesale growers who have their plant material ready to ship when we need it, so we're going for it!

"That's why there's a saying here "If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes" LOL!"

Same thing we say here in Maine. Yesterday morning when I woke up it was 24°, today it was 48°.

Wow

Brrr

:~)

48 feels warm!