Nearly two years ago, Liberty Graphics employees began to talk to Opper about the potential of buying the company through a worker cooperative. Of the 25 current employees, lots have been with the company for decades, according to Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Northampton, Massachusetts-based Cooperative Development Institute. He has been working with Opper and employees on the transition.
If they hadn’t been able to purchase the company, it seems likely to him that another buyer would not have had the same loyalty to Liberty or even to Maine.
“They’d be buying it for a brand, and a client list and the reputation,” Brown said. “They have a national reputation. Liberty Graphics could be anywhere, literally anywhere, in the country.”
But thanks to the worker cooperative, the company will stay in Liberty, where its roots are.
