C.O.P.E
If somebody told you they had a business selling trees and shrubs, plus a catering department, a food packaging line, a coffee roasting business and a soap manufacturers, all on a remote island in Scotland, you might wonder how it all got done.
C.O.P.E. stands for Community Opportunities for Participation in Enterprise. It was established by Frank Millsop in the Shetland Islands in 1997 following a three-year pilot under the local authority. It is now a limited company with charitable status, employing almost 100 staff and trainees, plus a number of volunteers.
11of the 50 members of staff have disabilities, and C.O.P.E. provide placements for an additional 45 people on training and support programmes. In addition they offer opportunities to 20 volunteers who work within the programme assiting the trainees and gaining key workskills for themselves. This means the company also qualifies as a social firm - a term used to define organisations at least 25% of whose employees have disabilities.
In fact, providing opportunities for people with learning disabilities is the company's reason for being. "It started because of the lack of resources and employment and training opportunities available on a local level," says Mr Millsopp. While running a project for Shetland Islands Council he noticed that "there were constraints on the service and a growing number of people with disabilities," he explains. "At the same time, the local day centre was moving to help people with more profound disabilities. So there was a gap in the market of social need."
Shetlands has a population of 22,000 and an economy built on the oil service industry, fishing, fish farming, crafting and tourism. C.O.P.E.'s main operation is in Lerwick, which has a population of 5,000.
C.O.P.E has a number of different trading businesses aimed at niche markets. C.O.P.E Catering was the first enterprise established, and has continued to grow over the past seven years. Sheltands Soap Company is a very successful company that manufactures handmade soaps, shower gels, creams and lotions with natural ingredients, and is sold in Lerwick as well as online. There is also Karibuni Coffee, where they roast green coffee beans and supply the coffee and other produce to offices, along with free, on-loan coffee machines; a wholefoods packaging line, where bulk sacks of rice and lentils are repacked for the domestic market, and several other companies that all fall under the C.O.P.E. umbrella. They are also looking to set up new projects in more rural areas of Shetlands.
The soap company idea was the result of a business suggestion from the national organization Social Firms UK. "I think Frank looked at it because it's quite labour intensive and the margins are incredibly good," explains Guy Turnbull, a consultant who helped put together the business plan." With social firms, whatever way you cut it, disabled people take longer to do things. You need to find enough margin in it."
The soap company is popular with tourists and the company also supplies soaps to the ferries that carry tourists between Aberdeen and Lerwick. Furthermore, it has done a deal to supply the Scottish Parliament with its own-brand soap.
"Markets seem to open up every week," says Mr Turnbull. "In terms of impact on people's lives, it's been amazing. What we underestimated was the therapeutic and creative value that soap brings. You can make so many flavours and different types and shape it in different ways that people both with and without disabilities get hooked on making the stuff." Mr Millsopp says there have been commercial enquiries about the soap from as far away as America. On the social side, they are advising a number of other potential social firms on replicating the business.