Coop De Grace

"ALL of us at the Coop look forward to the pleasure of serving you and would like to extend to you our deepest appreciation for your continued patronage," Coop President James A. Argeros wrote to members last week, announcing that this year's rebate was 7.8 percent.

Indeed, it is such a pleasure that Argeros forgot to mention that the rebate was almost two points lower than last year's 9.5 percent. In fact, our patronage was appreciated so much that he also failed to note that the rebate was the lowest in 12 years.

What were we told instead? That "the year was an exciting but extremely challenging one for the Coop," the Argeros letter says. It must have been pretty exciting watching the rebates plunge as the Coop experienced record sales last year.

Argeros did admit that "increasing competition for customers and sales, as well as competing in already overburdened labor and real estate markets," has forced costs to rise faster than sales, causing profits to drop. Let's face it. Retailing in Boston is competitive, but it is also lucrative.

TAKE-OVER artists have paid record fees to gobble up major Boston department store chains in the last year, citing profit opportunities in the New England market. Then the Coop entered the fray by opening stores on some of the highest-priced real estate in the city (Kendall Square, Longwood Ave., and Federal Street) and expecting to cash in on the market. But the Coop lacked any gimmick to attract shoppers other than high prices and a socialist-sounding name.

There's the heart of the problem. The Coop has wandered from it original mission, proclaimed by its motto "Serving the Academic Community Since 1882," and has tried to sell in the high-profit, highly competitive Boston retail market, for which the Coop is ill-suited. The Coop caters mainly to student needs and should not try to outdo department stores that serve a broader community. Students and faculty have funded the Coop's expensive ventures in the form of lower rebates.

"It sucks, but what else can you do?" a student said as he picked up his check last week. It seems that information about how the Coop is run and how decisions are made is kept at a minimum. Why doesn't the Coop send us an annual report? Unbeknownst to most students, we members do elect representatives to the Coop board of directors for one-year terms. So far, these student directors have consisted of resume-stuffing candidates who spend most of their time laboring on charity subcommittees and the like, instead of wielding a powerful voice in the Coop leadership. It's time we used our membership and our power of the vote to find out if the board of directors is truly acting in the interests of the Coop's community: the academic one.