Cleartxt

In 1951 a chemical manufacturer in England did something radical: the founder gave the company away — to the people who worked in it.

The company that makes Gore-Tex, W.L. Gore & Associates, doesn't call its people employees. It calls them associates — because they own roughly 90% of the company.

Hy-Vee, the Midwest grocery chain with more than 500 stores and about $14 billion in sales, is owned by the people who work there. It has been employee-owned since 1960.

Arup helped design the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre, and Beijing's 'Bird's Nest' stadium. The firm has no outside shareholders. It's owned in trust, for its own employees.

Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep — the studio behind them, Aardman, is owned by the people who make the films.

In 1983, 13 people bought the factory they worked in. They put in $100,000 of their own money and borrowed $8.9 million — a brutal debt load. Then they did something almost no company does: they showed everyone the books.

The Guardian newspaper has no owner who can sell it, cash out, or lean on the editor. It's owned by a trust whose single job is to keep the paper independent — in perpetuity.

When the big carriers decided rural Minnesota wasn't worth the fiber, 27 towns and townships built their own. RS Fiber is a member-owned broadband cooperative — the people getting the service own the network that delivers it.

Nearly every kiwifruit exported from New Zealand is sold by a company the growers own. Zespri is 100% owned by current and past New Zealand kiwifruit growers — about 2,800 of them — not by outside investors.

The hotel sign you've driven past for decades is owned by the hotels under it. Best Western isn't a normal chain — it's a nonprofit membership association. Each hotel is a voting member, not a franchisee paying a distant corporation.

The milk brand across northern Europe — Arla — is owned by the farmers who fill the tankers. 13,500 dairy farmers across seven countries, each with one vote, jointly own the cooperative that processes and sells what they produce.

In South Korea, 2.4 million farmers own their own bank, insurer, and marketing network. Nonghyup — the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation — is the apex of 1,223 local co-ops, and the farmers own the co-ops that own it.

In Finland, being a customer and being an owner are nearly the same thing. S Group — the country's largest retailer — is a consumer cooperative with over 1.9 million members, in a nation of 5.5 million people. Most households own a piece of it.

The largest consumer-governed nonprofit health organization in America is one most of the country has never heard of. HealthPartners, based in Minnesota: 1.8 million members, founded in 1957 as a cooperative. The patients govern it.

One in four Italian households belongs to a supermarket. Coop — Italy's largest grocery chain — is a consumer cooperative with 6.2 million members. Not loyalty-card holders. Owners.

In 2024 a hardware chain you've probably never heard of quietly bought the one you have. Do it Best — a retailer-owned cooperative in Fort Wayne, Indiana — acquired True Value out of bankruptcy. The co-op outlasted the corporation.

A Wisconsin firm that builds factory robots is owned by the engineers who build them. Isthmus Engineering has been a worker cooperative since 1983 — 32 employee-owners, $20M+ a year.

In the Bronx there's a housing development with 50,000 residents — bigger than most American cities. Nobody there is a landlord's tenant. They own it, together.

A city of 70,000 people runs for a week with no police force, no money, and no written laws. Instead it has ten sentences. Burning Man calls them the 10 Principles — the closest thing its temporary city has to a constitution.

Burning Man draws 70,000 people to a temporary city in the Nevada desert. It started with two guys, a beach, and an 8-foot wooden figure they set on fire in 1986. Here's how a bonfire for 20 friends became a city.

There's a kind of home you can own where you're not allowed to sell it for a big profit — on purpose. It's called a limited-equity housing co-op, and it's one of the few things keeping a neighborhood affordable for the next family, not just this one.

Someone asked us this week: 'What about Anchor butter?' Fair question — it's one of the most recognizable dairy brands on earth. And like Kerrygold, it's owned by the farmers. Here's the New Zealand version of the story.

There's a grocery chain in Wisconsin where the cashier ringing you up might be an owner. Woodman's Markets — 19 stores, 100% employee-owned. Not a co-op exactly. Something close, and worth knowing.

You've shopped at a ShopRite. You've probably never heard of the company that owns it — because the stores own it. ShopRite is the storefront. Wakefern is the co-op behind it, and the store owners are the members. A chain that isn't a chain.

Seattle people already know this one. PCC Community Markets is a grocery store owned by its shoppers — tens of thousands of member households, the largest community-owned food market in the US.

A dozen of you named Sunsweet in the replies, so I checked. It holds up: the prune company is a cooperative — roughly 300 growers, mostly in California's valleys, have owned it together since 1917.