2022 Annual President’s Letter
2022 Annual President’s Letter
A Message from Basics Board President Jim Hutchinson
As part of our marking another year, I would like to thank all the Basics Owners for your support of our little store that does more. As we learn to live with COVID-19 and start to move past the pandemic, we have once again found our way around the rock and moved back to a more even keel. Our challenges, however, are not over.
Looming on the horizon is yet another competitor entering our market. We faced this same situation before the pandemic. It took us several years to recover. This time, go look at the new competitor. Check them out. Test their quality. Compare them with Basics. And then come back and let us know how we are doing. We are eager to learn from our challenges.
There was a time when Basics was the only organic game in town. During that time, we got the reputation for being the expensive place to shop. What people didn’t realize was that they were comparing the cost of organic products to nonorganic products. Now we find that we are lower on some items and higher on other items than our competitors, just like our competitors are with each other.
You can help us with this reputation we need to change. Study prices and let us know where we’re high and low. Then when someone out there says Basics is expensive, let them know the truth. Let them know our prices are highly competitive overall. And let them know they don’t have to sort out which are the organic vegetables and that we screen for artificial colors and sweeteners. That we work very hard to keep ingredients that are not healthy out of our store. That our focus is on our Owners and their health.
I suspect our challenges will never end. However, with a firm base of support from our Owners, we will continue to learn, grow, and thrive from our experiences. I’m looking forward to another year of health and happiness in Basics and invite you to join us on this path.
Yours in Health,
Jim Hutchinson
Basics Board President
Your 2022-2023 Basics Co-op Board of Directors: Jim Hutchinson, Sarah Hotchkiss, Lindsey Jozefiak, Kevin Manhart, Joyce Lang. All board correspondence is opened at the next scheduled meeting.
Mail to: Basics Board of Directors, 1711 Lodge Drive, Janesville WI, 53545
Email to: basicscoopboard@gmail.com
General store operations questions and feedback should be directed to the Basics General Manager, Lynnette Wirth, at (608)754-3925 or basics4lynnette@gmail.com.