Built by retailers for retailers

The Run Specialty Cooperative’s vision is to create a stronger Run Specialty Industry by inspiring and unifying independent owners towards meaningful change.

We plan on doing this by leveraging our combined data to fund an organization that realizes the economic, cultural, and social needs of our members and their surrounding community.

Data is the start of the conversation, but it isn’t the end. The Run Specialty Cooperative will give all Independent Owners a seat at the table. Your voice will be heard, and our only agenda is your agenda.

Please take a look at the presentation. If it interests you, you can sign up below. Feel free to email mark@runcooperative.org as well if you have any questions about anything. I’d be happy to help. One thing I want to make clear is that we are reaching out to our brands in partnership, and our data is valuable to them. Your data belongs to you, and you can do with it as you see fit, but I personally think it’s best if we don’t shut off our data until the brands have had a chance to see our platform and shape it into what they want it to be.

We have a FAQ that is forming at runcooperative.org. We’ll update it as often as we can. One question has been “is this a buying group?” The answer to that is that when Greg, Brad, Trey, and I formed this we didn’t have a buying group in mind. That being said, the beauty of the cooperative is that our agenda can be whatever we want it to be. So if that’s what our membership wants, that’s a part of what we can become. To be honest, though, I see us as being so much more than that.

What better way is there to show partnership with independent retailers than helping us, the owners of our data, benefit from our data? What have you got to lose? We want you to have our data, but we want to be the ones to benefit from that. It’s very simple. Please sign up below. Signing up is not a guarantee of anything and it costs you nothing. It’s an opportunity to start a conversation and to shape the platform, seeing what we can offer. We’ll set you up with Peter Woolery and you can discuss what you need to see from the metadata.
I truly see this as a partnership effort to strengthen our channel. If you have questions, come find me at TRE. I’ll be at the education sessions on Tuesday and on Wednesday I’ll be hanging out at the Optio booth, 1244, with Lance from 10am – 12pm or so. I’d love to chat more.