Our business structure is unusual and worth explaining. Every massage practitioner at New Seattle Massage is self-employed and we have joined together to pool our resources as a cooperative. We are the largest cooperatively owned massage practice we know of in the nation.

When you receive a massage at New Seattle Massage, the massage practitioner directly receives the money paid and contributes a portion of the price to the co-op for shared costs such as laundry, receptionists, facility rent & upkeep, administration and advertising. There is no other owner, other than each of us owning our own individual practices: no other individuals or stockholders gain profits from the work done by LMP's; no owner other than ourselves tells us how to run our business or how to give a massage.

We have created this co-op to better serve our clients and ourselves. Our facility offers clients amenities none of us could offer individually (steam room, sauna, showers), client calls are answered 84 hours/week and we are free from administrative tasks and laundry. Rather we can do what we love to do: provide massage.

There are different kinds of cooperatives: those owned by consumers (e.g. Puget Consumers Cooperative, Group Health Cooperative), producer cooperatives or supply cooperatives (those owned by artisans who pool resources to share equipment or purchase discounts), and marketing cooperatives (those owned by artisans who pool resources to share a marketing identity). New Seattle Massage is a blend of the supply and marketing cooperative types.

For more general information about cooperatives, contact the National Cooperative Business Association or the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA).