Judy Musicant on sun 1 may 05
Raya,
At my co-op, the reward for extra responsibility is a lower commission =
rate. Like you, we pay a monthly rental fee. But our commissions start =
at 40% for those who do no work at all (few, if any, of those people). =
If you put in at least 8 hours a month of sales duty, your commission is =
20%. It drops to 10% or lower the more hours you work. The treasurer =
does the books, writes the checks and does the tax information return. =
I don't know for sure, but I suspect she pays no commission on her =
sales.
People do need an incentive for extra work, and a disincentive for not =
working! Good luck.
Judy
Jennifer Boyer on mon 2 may 05
I'm part of the board running a 26 year old coop gallery. We have 125
exhibitors now and about 12 are involved in the gallery work: 7 are on
the board and have admin. jobs. 5 clerk once a month. The board has a
20% commission taken and the 5 clerks have a 30% commission taken. The
other consignors are 40%. We also have quite a large paid staff.
There is no monthly fee.
If I was going to start a new gallery I wouldn't use the "% of sales"
model of compensation for work done. For one thing, the level of
valuable skills in board members has nothing to do with their success
as sellers. So our top seller on the board is only able to do
maintenance type work, which doesn't take that much time. Another
board member is a low seller but is willing to be the Human Resources
person who writes the employee handbook, hires/ fires clerks and does
employee reviews. So these two are compensated totally opposite to
their efforts.
It would be a rare situation where the top sellers are all willing to
put in the level of work that matches the profit they are making. The
way I think of it is that if you have a regular consignor taking 60%=20
their sales and a worker taking 70% of their sales, that 10%
difference must represent work. So if someone sells 1000 a year, they
owe $1000*.10 or $100 worth of work to the gallery.
The problem arises when one person makes 500 in sales and one makes
5000. One owes $50 and one owes $500. If you don't think of it in
those therms then the top sellers are rewarded most, no matter what=20
kind of time of commitment they put into the running of the gallery.
If I was going to do it over again I'd switch to a monthly flat fee
plus hourly pay for the time put in by each board member. That's the
most fair way to do it.
The consignment % model is a real morale drain for board members who
work alot and don't sell as well as their less committed peers.....
Jennifer
On 5/1/05, Judy Musicant wrote:
> Raya,
>=20
> At my co-op, the reward for extra responsibility is a lower commission ra=
te. Like you, we pay a monthly rental fee. But our commissions start at 4=
0% for those who do no work at all (few, if any, of those people). If you =
put in at least 8 hours a month of sales duty, your commission is 20%. It =
drops to 10% or lower the more hours you work. The treasurer does the book=
s, writes the checks and does the tax information return. I don't know for=
sure, but I suspect she pays no commission on her sales.
>=20
> People do need an incentive for extra work, and a disincentive for not wo=
rking! Good luck.
>=20
> Judy
--=20
***********************************
Jennifer Boyer
Thistle Hill Pottery
Montpelier, VT 05602
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