At a time when consumer focus on Canadian brands is at an all-time high, Mountain Equipment Company (MEC) announces that it has agreed to be acquired by a Canadian-led ownership group.
  • Dr. Bob@lemmy.caEnglish
    33·
    5 天前

    MEC can forever go fuck themselves. They broke the co-op to sell themselves to private equity and now want to wrap themselves in the flag? Never.

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      3 天前

      Former member here…

      Exactly. Fuck MEC. Will never go back. Plenty of other for profit stores selling overseas made stuff anyway, if thats what i’m looking for

      Unless i see some real, tangible changes back to its co-op values, i won’t go back. Don’t tell me about your “vision” of Made in Canada (deliberate avoidance of “product of canada”?)

    • bjorney@lemmy.ca
      253·
      5 天前

      They broke the co-op to sell themselves to private equity

      They were already under creditor protection when the sale happened. You can blame the old board for bankrupting the co-op, but the private equity acquisition was handled by the courts

      • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
        21·
        5 天前

        A small number of board members biased the vote to get moreof their friends onto it. The now-majority proceeded to run the co-op like a for-profit business, expanding for growth’s sake, and ensuring that if (when) the co-op failed, they’d make out like bandits. They then voted to violate the charter of the company, declare themselves a for- profit corp, and sell to US investors.

        Those fuckers didn’t even pay out the shares to us owners. They stole the co-op from us.

          • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
            6·
            4 天前

            The entire board of directors after their political coup. From about 2009 onwards, they restructured to focus on growth growth GROWTH! That was when they started to ramp up Chinese-made products and wind down their own manufacturing, and when they started to sell bikes under their own brand name.

        • twopi@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          4 天前

          And worse of all the courts did nothing about it. But the courts would be very happy with protecting shareholders of private and publicly traded companies.

    • AlternateRoute@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      132·
      5 天前

      Poor engagement from the coop members lead to voting in an ineffective board and management that lead to the coop going bankrupt.

      The “coop” did themselves in.

    • AlternateRoute@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      2 天前

      The Board / Leadership voted in by the Coop members apathetic voting turn outs bankrupted the coop, then under creditor protection the assets where sold off.

      This all happened in 2020, 5 years ago. The fact you didn’t notice till now sort of proves the lack of coop member engagement for really important votes before the end.

      • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 天前

        So it was my, and my ilks fault. Got it. I still fell they shafted me out of that 5 bucks though.

        • AlternateRoute@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          3·
          2 天前

          I was member as well so I AM your ilk, the coop had MILLIONS of members. IIRC from the last few disclosures less than 1% ever voted on anything.

          I bet if you banded together even 10k worth of people to vote a certain way you could have swayed ANY of the open annual elections.

          However what happened most of the time is about 5 whiny assholes showed up to AGM meetings and bitched and complained when they should have been rounding up support OUTSIDE the meetings to get people in to vote.

  • John@lemmy.ca
    6·
    4 天前

    Haven’t been back since the coop was deliberately bankrupted. No plans to.