Hi Bike Kitchen!

I used to work at the Oberlin Bike Co-op in Oberlin, Ohio. We had friendly relations with Ohio City Bicycle Co-op in Cleveland (35 miles away). Being in the center of a metropolitan region, they generally received more and better quality donations than did our co-op. On more than one occasion we hauled off a pick-up truck load of their surplus three-speeds and coaster-brake bikes. These bikes were typically of more use in our small, flat college town than in their big, not-completely-flat city. No money changed hands; it was all good will. (Thanks, Jim!) We also worked together on Co-op-to-Co-op Rides.

More sought-after bits like suntour barcons would probably keep their assigned monetary value in an exchange, but we wouldn't hesitate to call and see what they had in their bins.

Keeping other co-ops in your region aware of any especially large parts surpluses is a great idea. I suppose just saying, "hey, we're here if you need us," is a good place to start.

Tom

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Rigel Christian <rigelc@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

Me and some of the mechanics at our co-op (www.bikekitchen.org) were
talking about advocacy, the proliferation of bike collectives, and of
course as bike geeks tend to do, parts.

I know some collectives have more parts or material resources of a
certain type than they can handle, and others have less. Are there
already parts-sharing agreements between co-ops in other areas of the
world? If another co-op from 50+ miles away called you up asking if
you had, for example, some suntour indexed 7-speed barcons, how would
you handle that?

It's just a thought experiment, but I'm curious to find out how other
groups already share, or if there are ideas on how to more efficiently
share the parts donations that come in, so as to maximize the
allocation of available resources.

Cheers.
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