When the founding members of Halcyon House secured their commercial space in downtown Duluth, they took a unique approach to their buildout. Rather than rushing to open their doors for customers, they slowed their buildout down so that they could plaster, paint, and oil the walls of their studio with their bare hands using environmentally friendly, non-toxic materials. Because of this, the buildout took them nine months.
While a project like that would make many small business owners’ heads spin, it’s unsurprising to anybody who knows the worker-owners of Halcyon House and the values that drive their cooperative: collaboration, sustainability, and holistic wellness.
Halcyon House is a mind-body therapy studio based in downtown Duluth. Through a wide variety of services—including physical therapy, acupuncture, massage therapy, and retail tea and wellness products—Halcyon aims to create a restorative and calm space for the community to recenter, reconnect, and drink amazing tea.
Driven by a commitment to shared prosperity and serving the community, every member of the Halcyon team is deeply invested in creating an atmosphere of warmth, hospitality, and genuine care for guests. And for Jennifer Montgomery, operating as a cooperative—in which the business is owned, governed, and managed by its workers—is the only way that Halcyon House can live up to these goals.
“It changes the dynamic when somebody is the exclusive owner.” Says Jennifer, a founding owner and the President of Halcyon’s Board of Directors. “I always wanted a more collaborative working environment, where colleagues are coming together for the greater good of their clients… I didn’t want to start a business for me. I wanted to start a business for the community.”
The worker owners of Halcyon House hand mixed plaster for the walls of their downtown Duluth studio.
Once a group of workers make the decision to start their own cooperative, they must establish and register their business with both local and federal government entities. This requires navigating a world of laws and regulations that were not built with the cooperative business model in mind.
Through steps like registering with the IRS and obtaining an Employer Identification Number, the worker owners of Halcyon House frequently found that the piles of paperwork they had to complete left cooperatives out of the drop-down menus and checkbox lists as options for a legal business entity. And when it came time to write Halcyon’s bylaws—the legally-binding, governing laws of a cooperative—the resources and guidance that they received from small business consultants were limited.
“Traditional small business coaching was helpful for the basics, but we found that they have little understanding of cooperatives,” says Josh Jones, a founding owner and board member of Halcyon House. “We really needed to work with people who had experience supporting cooperatives… to go beyond basics like marketing or communication.”
Through the recommendation of another cooperative in Duluth, the Halcyon House’s worker owners connected with Darren Mozenter, the Senior Shared Ownership Advisor at MCCD. Working closely with Darren, they developed a business plan, registered with the IRS, and wrote their bylaws.
Once these foundational pieces of Halcyon House were in place, the worker owners also began holding meetings for the business’s Board of Directors. Operating a cooperative Board of Directors can be challenging; because board members are also workers and owners of the business, they are making key financial and governance decisions from multiple perspectives.
But the Halcyon House worker owners stepped up to this challenge with confidence. They worked with Darren to set up structured board meetings for members to review Halcyon’s financials, make hiring decisions, and strategize for the business’s long-term growth. And while having to work with a board and worker owners can make decisions move more slowly than in a conventionally owned business, this collaboration makes Halcyon House’s worker owners more confident in the choices they make for the business.
“Darren has been good about helping us understand how these different perspectives work when we are making decisions for the business,” says Josh. “It takes a long time to make decisions, but it’s helpful to have these longer conversations and give our plans time to take shape so that we know for sure what is best for us.”
The Halcyon House team recently hosted a community sound bath. Locals packed Halcyon's downtown Duluth studio with yoga mats and blankets for a meditative evening with tea.
It has been two years since the founding worker owners and Board Members of Halcyon House rolled up their sleeves to plaster the walls of their studio, and a year and a half since they wrote the bylaws that officially established their business. Through this long, collaborative, and community-centered work, Halcyon has remained focused on their guiding principle: working together to create a community-serving space in Duluth.
As Halcyon House’s wellness services and worker owner base grow—they have recently added an Occupational Therapist, Western Herbalist, and Sound Meditation Specialist to their team—the business has established a scholarship fund to ensure that their services are more financially accessible to the Duluth community. Additionally, their studio now hosts low cost, public “Tea Talk” events, where local experts on every topic from entrepreneurship to the history of swing dance share their expertise with community members. And, of course, these events come with free tea.
The worker owners of Halcyon House are committed to helping people in their community care for their bodies, connect with their neighbors, and find their new favorite tea. And none of this, Jennifer emphasizes, would be possible if Halcyon House was not a cooperative.
“We’re trying to create something that we thought Duluth was missing, so we wanted it to be a Duluth-owned business. That’s basically what a cooperative is: a business run by and for the community… I am proud of the way it’s come together.”