Comments on: Direct Economy and abundance https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/direct-economy-and-abundance/2015/09/15 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:04:59 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Ed https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/direct-economy-and-abundance/2015/09/15/comment-page-1#comment-1378200 Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:04:59 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=51855#comment-1378200 It may not be very all that instructive to think of Ben & Jerry’s in relation to the growing trend by the giants of scale to carry out direct public offerings. Large organizations as well as small ones today face a very different world than that in which Ben & Jerry’s operated in 1984, the time of its first and limited Vermont-only offering.

Although at the time the offering was a very creative financial move, Ben & Jerry’s size and production was minuscule compared to other ice cream producers and continued to be so for some time, despite the direct public offering. In fact, in 1986, just two years after their direct public offering, Ben & Jerry’s contracted with Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream to produce and distribute Ben & Jerry’s products in markets outside of northeastern United States.

Ben & Jerry’s also had another equity offering in 1985. This was a more traditional SEC-regulated offering with an underwriter and Ben & Jerry’s was subsequently listed on the NASDAQ national market.

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