Create a merchant cooperative

You want to organize a group of freelancers.  

You do not want to capitalize on the organization created other than by the benefits it could bring you for your activity, in the same way as the other freelancers who participate in it.  

You are convinced that the strength of the grouping is the independence of its members and that the grouping exists only by the sum of the interests of these members: it exists through them and for them.  

You think that governance is more effective when it is collective and that the cooperative allows everyone to express themselves equally.  

The merchants’ cooperative is then probably adapted to your needs: the decision-making method is collegial, each partner having one vote, and the budget is voted by all, the profits being distributed among partners in proportion to their activity with the cooperative.  

It therefore does not pursue the realization of a profit for itself. Transparent, she works by and for the cooperators who participate in her life and are her clients.  

An ancient figure of law, devilishly modern in its values, the weight of merchants’ cooperatives in distribution in France is colossal.  

Gouache Avocats alongside merchant cooperatives

Gouache Avocats advises many independent merchant cooperatives.  

He has worked to transform a “concession” type network into a cooperative, participated in the creation of merchants’ cooperatives, regularly drafts cooperative statutes, internal regulations, contracts between the cooperative and its members as he advises cooperatives in their operation and relations with their members.  

Gouache Avocats regularly trains members of the Fédération du Commerce Coopératif et Associé (FCA), which brings together major French brands organized into cooperatives of independent traders.  

Three of our partners, Jean-Baptiste Gouache, Guillaume Gouachon and Nicolas Pchibich are expert members of the Cooperative and Associate Trade Federation.  

As such, Gouache Avocats has developed a good knowledge of the cooperative world, its codes and its sociology, at the same time as the specificities of cooperative law.  

Our method for creating merchant cooperatives
 

 
We define with you the purpose of the cooperative, its mode of operation, in all relations with members, to express its specificities in compliance with the general law of cooperatives, the special law of merchant cooperatives. 
 
We decide on the contractual strategy: which provisions must be included in the articles of association, in the internal regulations, or in separate contracts (sign contract, supply contract).  

This strategy is implemented taking into account the mandatory provisions of cooperative company law, but also the adjustments that competition law allows within cooperatives.