Phillips County Equity Co-op Association holds 99th annual meeting

The Annual Shareholder meeting and banquet of the Equity Co-op Association of Phillips County was held Thursday, October 8.

President Frank Drabbs opened the meeting and Art Solberg blessed the wonderful pork roast meal prepared by the Westside Restaurant. Gary Knudsen read the minutes from the last meeting held July 16, 2014 at Westside.

Drabbs stated, “Co-op business was down a little bit this last year. Fuel was down and that makes our margins really tight. CHS cut back quite a bit on the patronage that we got back, the retirement. All in all that tends for a little lower year. We’re hanging on and we got one more year to make 100, so we’re still going.”

Darcy Reum and Sally Salveson with Wipfli Galusha accounting firm gave a review of the 2014 tax year. The firm confirmed the summation of Drabbs’s statement in that the fuel prices were down a little bit last year. The margins were tighter and a lot of the profits had to do with fuel.

Reum stated, “And that’s a typical trend you would see as fuel prices climb often times the gross profits will increase and as fuel prices drop your gross profits are going to decrease. It’s just a trend in the industry that you would expect to see.”

Manager Mark French gave a report and stated, “If you are wondering why the meeting is so late it’s because of the transition of the computers. The computers help us out. There is a lot of positive I like about the investment we made in the computers. We have a lot better control over our inventory and our accounts receivable. That’s part of our reinvestments and improvements. It’s starting to pay back.”

French continued on by going over several reinvestments and improvements and by disclosing a wish to expand sometime in the future.

“The more storage we have invested the more we are paid back, “ said French. “The one area we haven’t put any real money back into is the store. What we want to expand into is something that’s not in the town. We don’t want to go head to head with someone else’s business in town. We want to add something that’s not here or have more of what we have or display it more. We’re not looking to do something extravagant we’re just trying to provide what the community needs or wants.”

Mark went on to thank all the employees of the Co-op; Dale Kaasa, Virgil Abrahamson, brothers Mike and Denny McCarty, Steve Heppner, Red Peterson, Janni Wiese, Cathy Verhoef, Marilyn Komis, Lorraine Watson, and Kristi Wagner.

Drabbs closed with a reminder that the Equity Co-op has a group of very loyal members who have been with the Co-op for 99 years.

Next November the Co-op will be celebrating 100 years (2016). They would like any Co-op memorabilia the community may have to share to help in that celebration.

The Co-op would like to let everyone know, They have survived that long. It’s quite an accomplishment and says a lot for their members.