The Oregon Marketplace by Marc Bouvier The economy of Lane County, Oregon crumbled in the early 1980’s. When US housing starts declined, layoffs in the woodproducts industry proliferated, and the heavily timber-dependent region went into recession. During these dark times, a few creative people were able to fashion new relationships among local businesses, fostering regional autonomy and diversity rather than economic dependence and monoculture. With a grant of $10,000 from US National Bank, a Eugene-based non-profit, NEDCO (Neighborhood Economic Development Organization), initiated an educational campaign to convince consumers and area businesses to Buy Eugene. Local businesses were encouraged to replace imports used in the production process with local goods. This economic strategy, known as import substitution, was voluntary, but facilitated by a brokering system. The intent was to avoid top-down economic conversion. In the beginning of the first year of operations. Buy Eugene discovered that many local manufacturers were not buying from each other even though prices were, in many instances, significantly cheaper. Traditional relationships held fast because many small and/or new firms lacked either the marketing capacity or a purchasing department capable of securing more effective contracts. Buy Eugene intervened in this process by providing a broker that would A) work with a purchaser to formally document their product needs, B) conduct an extensive search of businesses that might meet that need, C) collect and submit bids to the purchaser, and D) keep information flowing between the purchaser and potential suppliers. Putting local goods to work: Operations manager Janet Kerans watches as regional manager Brenda Cheatham flips Oregon Marketplace paperwork with a locally-produced pizza scraper. to enhance the chances of a successful match. For this facilitation. Buy Eugene collected a small fee. By the end of the first year, the program was clearly successful. Many businesses found it to their advantage to work with other local firms. Contracting with a local company made personal visits more common and enhanced quality control. There was usually a reduction in the order/ delivery lag time. Communication costs, inventory requirements and warehousing needs were all substantially reduced. Needless to say, the reduced transportation needs created less of a burden on the environment. In the first year of the program, 14 new contract agreements were made. These matches replaced $500,000 of imported purchases, created 90 new jobs and saved local purchasers an estimated $125,000. The total budget of Buy Eugene was a modest $35,000. In one local match, Burley Design Cooperative cut the cost of bicycle cart wheels by purchasing from a Eugene company instead of a Taiwanese one. In another instance, a small, local company produced new band uniforms for the University of Oregon. With this new contract, four new people were hired and a new corporation was formed. Perhaps the biggest success was a $1,200,000 contract that led to a poultry farm supplying cooked chicken to a These reusable, labeled vegetable bags, meantfor gathering and refrigerated storage, were produced through brokering among local producers by the Oregon Marketplace. Photos by Dan Long-Coogan. Page 20 RAIN Spring 1993 Volume XIV, Number 3
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