It’s official: Winkler Co-op will soon be known as Gardenland Co-op.
Members voted overwhelmingly in favour of the name change at the cooperative’s 93rd annual general meeting held in Winkler April 10.
Board president Milt Olfert said they’re excited to start a new era for the business with a name that better reflects the growing area they serve.
“It’s a nice fit: we are the gardenland of southern Manitoba,” he said. “There’s so many good things that come with that. And the growth that this Co-op has had, it’s just like having a great bumper crop in these great soils we have here.”
The business has grown in recent years to include locations not just in Winkler and Morden but also Plum Coulee, Rosetown, Lowe Farm, Rosenort, and St. Joseph.
Olfert acknowledges that it’s likely most people will still refer to the Co-op by the name of whatever town they’re in.
“It will take time to get used it. And I think some of the communities will always call it by their home community’s name, and that’s fine because it can be Gardenland Co-op at Lowe Farm or Rosenort. Really, the brand is Co-op, not Winkler.
“Winkler has been the hub of southern Manitoba for so many things, but it’s great that we can now branch out and partner with other communities and be stronger together.”
Last year was a challenging one in some ways for the Co-op, which saw total sales dip somewhat to $144.8 million, down from the $158.4 million of the year before.
Rising fuel costs and fluctuations in the value of fertilizer and chemicals played a big role in that dip, as did other ongoing challenges including inflation, interest rate pressure, government regulation, market fluctuations, and increased competition, directors shared.
Nonetheless, the store is able to give back a 2023 patronage allocation to its 20,806 members totalling over $4.9 million—over 80 per cent of their net savings for the year.
Diversification has helped the Co-op weather the up and downs of the marketplace, observed Olfert.
“A lot of smaller Co-ops can’t make money locally on their own without Federated’s help,” Olfert said. Federated Co-operatives Limited is the wholesaling, manufacturing, marketing, and administrative co-operative the local Co-op is a member of.
“We’ve been able to do it for so many years and, yeah, sometimes there’s a little blip of things that you can’t control, but we’ve weathered those storms better than other Co-ops were able to, so the losses were minimal compared to what others have experienced.
“Diversification has been huge, and we saw it really through the pandemic,” Olfert said, noting fuel sales dropped significantly in those years, but the Co-op’s other departments—grocery, clothing, appliances—carried them through the worst of it. “We had that diversity to fall back on.”
The push for diversity sees the Co-op adding a new pharmacy at the Morden grocery store. It’s slated to open in the next few weeks.
“Every time you add another division into your portfolio, everything gets stronger, and a pharmacy is one of those. It’s a great fit in with the Morden store,” Olfert said, noting the pharmacy is already staffed and just waiting on final inspections.
In addition to its patronage cheques and the equity given to its members, Co-op also gave back by donating $491,000 to more than 300 community projects and causes in 2023.
“It’s the community that has built the Co-op,” Olfert stressed. “So we have to give it back.
“If we can continue to give back and build the community, it’s just going to make us stronger and the community stronger. It’s in the Co-op’s DNA to do that, and we don’t want to move away from that.”
