Not a startup. A three-decade conviction.
Most people pitching “platform co-operatives” are two years old. Buying.Coop is the endpoint of a documented 25-year lineage — from a Toronto buying group to a UN-backed marketplace. Here is the road that led to it.
International Business Exchange
Founder Ahmed Attia builds a platform letting businesses in developing nations trade commodities by barter instead of scarce foreign currency. Later scaled as Unibex, partnering with the American Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.
416Direct — the first buying group
The direct ancestor of Buying.Coop: an internet buying group that pools small businesses to win the enterprise pricing normally reserved for big-box chains. Named for Toronto’s area code — a neighbourhood idea with a global thesis inside it.
Buying.Coop lineage beginsSmall business at the national table
416Direct joins the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) and is presented at a federal-budget press event with the Minister of State for Finance — a neighbourhood buying group, recognized in national small-business policy. The two go on to co-host the “Meeting of the Minds” workshop series for SME owners.
Institutional allies
Through the CFIB, 416Direct partners with Bloomberg Media and joins the national “Shop Small Biz” campaign — assembling the credibility and reach a buying group needs to negotiate like an enterprise on behalf of its members.
Direct Co-ops is born
Direct Co-ops soft-launches on Earth Day at the Ritz-Carlton — attended by three Ontario cabinet ministers and the Saudi Canadian Business Council. The buying-group model becomes a co-operative, the immediate parent of Buying.Coop. That same year, 519Direct proves the model ports from one city to the next.
The co-operative model, formalizedDirect Global & the global platform
A discrete local project becomes a global platform — 15,000+ participating businesses — and is profiled on Bloomberg-BNN in North America.
Featured on Bloomberg-BNNThe marketplace pilot — Buying.Coop takes shape
NCBA-CLUSA, America’s oldest co-operative association, partners with Direct Global on a global commerce platform for co-ops. The member-owned B2B marketplace that becomes Buying.Coop begins here as a pilot — two decades of buying-group work, finally going online.
NCBA-CLUSA pilotBuying.Coop & the world stage
The United Nations backs Direct Global’s work on the Sustainable Development Goals, and NOW Toronto asks whether the co-op model can help local business compete with Amazon and Uber. Buying.Coop launches as the answer — a collective-purchasing marketplace built on 25 years of proof.
The buying group, realizedThe platforms multiply
With the purchasing co-operative proven, Direct Global seeds two more member-owned platforms: Fare.Coop for ride-hailing and FareEats / Direct Local Eats for food delivery.
#3 rideshare in America — in under 12 months
Fare.Coop becomes the third-largest fully licensed rideshare in the United States, live across Arizona, California, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts and Oregon. The duopoly cracks.
The duopoly breaksSecureRide™ & the national stage
Fare.Coop launches SecureRide™ with HUB Cyber Security (Nasdaq: HUBC) — the world’s first perpetually verified rideshare — and becomes the #9 most-played commercial on US national radio.
The future, verified
