Enterprise Members
This page will document progress as the COOP starts up and we select the sought after Enterprise Members and learn therefore the location of the 10 Beta Sites. While the COOP is registered in Quebec the Members and the 10 Enterprise Members can be located in other Provinces or States of the USA.
However, the goal is to gain sufficient volume of sales to establish the direct wholesale price arrangement. Therefore, any location where we find it possible to localize production due to numbers of Members and volume of sales in that area, and where suitable manufacturing capacity exists, then the COOP will minimize the transport of material by allocating production to new members of our Manufacturing Network. This is a strategy to stimulate distributed manufacturing for the structural components and thereby reduce the embodied energy of our products.
To grow the COOP globally and across North America we will welcome Enterprise Members who are strong entrepreneurs and who can build up a network of Associates who they train as Enterprise Members since such teams will be more effective in making Sola Roof DIY visible in a vast number of locations. Such showcase sites can represent the COOP products and educate users. Making Sola Roof DIY accessible is the only effective way to spread the know-how and prove that the technology is effective and friendly enough for personal use. There is a great deal of education and demonstration that is required to encourage people to give DIY a try and gain confidence that the skills can be mastered without too much time and effort and to understand the substantial benefits. Enterprise Members are enthusiasts and their satisfaction with Sola Roof must be "infectious".
We will have an Intra Net? for the Enterprise Members since they are not competitive but rather do there best through cooperation. They will share experience and "best practices" and they serve a community that are highly knowledgeable customers because the Sola Roof community is using Open Source technology and massive capacity for sharing the best results for all kinds of crops, climates and ways to use and enjoy their Sola Roof projects. Our goal is to make the Enterprise Members into an excellent Marketing Network? so that the COOP can focus on producing the best possible DIY Kit components.
A COOP such as we are establishing has no need to "sell" to its Members - by definition they have joined the COOP for the benefit of being able to purchase the DIY Kit through their collective action. Therefore growing the community is primarily an educational mission that rests on the shoulders of the Enterprise Members.