Consumer Cooperative Group is a multi-family real estate investment cooperative that’s Black-owned, funded, and controlled by Tanen Andrews, a lifelong entrepreneur, and his wife, Tomica Hogg-Andrews.
Consumer Cooperative Group aims to tackle the racial wealth gap through indirect ownership of real estate by issuing equity stock directly to the people. The cooperative will represent the financial purchasing power of its members/investors as a single financial investment vehicle.
Andrews founded the cooperative to help a neglected and under-served market of retail investors. These retail investors are categorized as non-accredited and they make up 98% of the market and yet have been denied access to financial wealth opportunities in early start-ups.
“The Jobs Act of 2016 has given us equitable relief. We can now use the system they created to buy back our real estate, take an equity interest, control the cash flow, build back our wealth as a cooperative group and then hedge it on Wall Street,” Andrews said.
In the world of finance, there are three types of investors: Non-accredited investors (low to middle-income workers, families with small & teenage children, and students), Accredited/Sophisticated investors (entrepreneurs, middle-class families, those with 401k’s, and real estate holdings), and Institutional Investors (Hedge Funds, Venture Capitalists, Angel Investor Networks, Angel Groups Private Equity, Family Offices).
The use of this categorization has created financial opportunities for accredited and institutional investors while leaving non-accredited investors behind. According to the Andrews’, this is a form of financial gatekeeping, one that Consumer Cooperative Group aims to work around.
The company’s Real Estate Investment Cooperative, REIC, is innovative and will disrupt the current real estate industry because most investors are forced to invest in these financial vehicles through their 401k. However, the Crowdfund Act removed the third part intermediary constraint and now allows direct public access to capital for a neglected and underserved community of investors.
“The wealth gap is artificial. If we can remove the manipulation through our cooperative, it will aid in the democratization of our financial system, equitably to this new market of non-accredited investors and their communities through 100% pure crowdfunding,” Andrews expressed.
The cooperative is based on something the couple has dubbed Cooponomics, which is a play on the words cooperative and economics. This method creates a financial network of like-minded individuals who pool their capital resources together in exchange for equity stock. Stock that investors will utilize to build a secure financial foundation instead of incurring debt with the traditional model that has been forced upon those without any other resources.
Andrews plans to take Consumer Cooperative Group public by directly listing it on the New York Stock Exchange American, which would be the first Black founded, Black-owned, Blacked controlled and Black funded cooperative to be publicly listed and traded since Bob Johnson of BET Holdings in 1991.
“Together, we can keep our wealth & transfer it to our future generations,” he said.
Join Consumer Cooperative Group today to claim your equity and start building wealth.
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