Customer share

A new company has been set up which provides new incentives for the customer and which purports to introduce a new business and societal model. Retailer AllShare.com intends to give shares to each customer via an e-loyalty-card for a fixed amount of spend with the company whether on the internet or at any of their physical outlets. “Everybody wins in this scenario” said Jez Calvert the founder and CEO. “The more people buy, the more shares they get and, by boosting turnover and profit, the more the shares are worth."

Explaining further, he says: "Although, we steadily lose a proportion of the ownership of the company and of any rising capital valuation, we would anticipate our profits also rising and our being better remunerated as a result. More significantly, if all goes well, the customer will eventually become the majority shareholder. We think other companies would benefit from following our lead. This kind of full, participatory capitalism will incentivize the customer to support his company and ensures the company acts in the best interests of its customers since they will end up being one and the same.”

The company has said it will ring-fence a proportion of the shares a little in excess of the original capitalization based on a model of what the company will be worth should their customers have bought enough goods to merit a two thirds stake in the business: “The math is quite complicated and has to be a little elastic but basically we have set up a variety of projections assuming that kind of holding over various time scales. We won't lose out but our profit will all be in our earnings."