Show HN: Searchable directory of 22k+ products from worker-owned co-ops

146

IIESAI_ski about 3 hours ago 25 commentsRead Article on workerowned.info

RU version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

93% Positive

Analyzed from 611 words in the discussion.

Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

rafram•1 minute ago

The search field loses keypresses on mobile. I haven’t looked at the code, but I’m assuming it uses a React-style value binding but has some synchronous processing before it propagates the new field value back into the state variable. That is a really terrible pattern.

daheza•about 3 hours ago

Very nice and appreciate the effort you put into making this.

Some Improvements that could help: the location search could be an actual map with pins which would be easier to use some kind of tags for the different appareal items would help clarify which one, currently i have to click and search each vendor for things im looking for. Specifically autistic friendly / sensory clothing items.

MintTea•about 1 hour ago

Maybe a little leaflet.js w/ open street maps would fit the spirit of the site

johnjreiser•about 1 hour ago

Seconding location based lookups. I might not be looking for something specific, but if I know of businesses nearby worth patronizing, when I need that good/service, I'll visit them then.

IESAI_ski•about 2 hours ago

good idea. i can do this :)

thousandflowers•about 1 hour ago

Really nice project!

It will be intresing an automation that check online for word like “worker cooperative”, “worker-owned” to find new candidate that fit.

Ofc the hard part is confirming if it's genuinely worker-owned, so keeping that step human makes sense. But the discovery/shortlisting could be largely automated crawl the web, score candidates by how many co-op signals they hit, and present the top ones for you to vet.

Would be happy to help prototype something like this if you're interested (i really like your idea).

LPisGood•about 2 hours ago

I wonder of there is a version of this but for jobs?

consumer451•about 2 hours ago

Not exactly what you asked for, but here is a related Wiki entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_compani...

eikenberry•about 2 hours ago

+100... I'd love to find a spot at a tech co-op but they seem as common as a hen's tooth.

NortySpock•15 minutes ago

You can work in the technology department of a non-tech company.

I am enjoying being a part of an employee-owned company so far.

LPisGood•about 2 hours ago

I know of (and briefly worked at!) a small one; truly unheard of benefits and very good compensation package.

benonsocial•about 2 hours ago

Terrific idea. I agree with daheza. Location search would be an awesome feature. The site is blazing fast. Great work. Keep it up.

murats•about 1 hour ago

Really nice project. I wonder if discovery could be partly automated by crawling for worker owned or co op signals, then leaving the final verification to humans.

williadc•about 1 hour ago

Does WinCo Foods count? https://www.wincofoods.com/employee-owned

Rauchg•about 1 hour ago

This is super fast. Great job!

derektank•about 1 hour ago

No B2B SaaS D:

650REDHAIR•about 2 hours ago

This is awesome- thank you!

DyslexicAtheist•about 2 hours ago

good to see this but all of them pay taxes in the US. we need something like this in Europe as well. think global but act local ...

worik•about 3 hours ago

This is good work.

Ethical consumption in a capitalist economy is unachievable...but we can optimise

appreciatorBus•about 2 hours ago

There is nothing inherently ethical about co-op owned organizations nor anything inherently unethical about privately owned organizations.

The party vanguard of the worker co-op is exactly as capable of selfish or abusive behaviour as the private owner.

tavavex•16 minutes ago

> There is nothing inherently ethical about co-op owned organizations nor anything inherently unethical about privately owned organizations.

I disagree. Co-ops are inherently democratic. Privately owned business is inherently anti-democratic. The difference only becomes starker as the scale increases. That alone makes it seem more ethical to me, before you even get to examining the way democratic organizations obviously do a better job at checking any single person's power than rule by one, as well as other effects.

IESAI_ski•about 2 hours ago

totally. we can badger people to buy from better companies but that seems so tough. better to just make it easier for people to buy from better companies :)

ljsprague•about 1 hour ago

Consumption itself is unethical.

IESAI_ski•about 3 hours ago

I wanted to buy from worker-owned cooperatives but there was no single place to see what they actually sell. So I scraped the product catalogs from ~60 worker-owned co-op stores and made them searchable.

22,000+ products: coffee, chocolate, clothing, books, home goods, etc. You search, find something, and click through to buy directly from the co-op's store. Nothing goes through me.

There's also a section for finding worker-owned coffee shops, restaurants, and bars by city (110+ listings, mostly US).

Static Next.js site, JSON-backed search. No accounts, no tracking, no ads.

Happy to answer questions about the data or how I identified which businesses are actually worker-owned. Please reach out if you want to add your co-op!

abrookewood•1 minute ago

Hey, this is pretty cool and very fast. So there is no database? How do you handle the scraping etc? Do the businesses know you are doing this?

One thought, it might be good to list all of the products together,rather than only being able to view them by each business. Nice job :)