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Thanks to someone in the Cooperative Development chatroom I just learned about a new co-op model I've never heard of before: a cooperative work pool!
TL;DR a bike shop and a ski shop could setup a work pool. In the winter when the bike shop doesn't have enough customers, the employees go work for the ski shop where it's the busy season (and during the summer they go back to the bike shop). This would be much better than getting fired every winter!
I've worked at a couple of ski resorts and got a little manipulated
by bosses in the shuffle to keep working after seasons ended.
It could also "spread" union sentiment from one area to another :P
@pkw yah, I've been at bike shops that did ski stuff specifically to try and pad out the winter months and not have to fire people or reduce hours, but it wasn't their specialty so they ended up not doing it as well as a proper ski shop. Forming a b2b co-op and agreeing to trade off employees seems like a much better way to do things and keep everybody employed!
@sam we’ve got a couple shops here that are simply a bike & ski shops in the first place 
@sam (your actual point is well taken)
@rowmyboat I've worked at shops that did this as well, but generally they did one well and the other not as well and/or offered limited services for one or the other (ie. my last bike shop just did waxing and edging for ski's but no tune ups or anything that required base material work). Having specialty shops share employees really seems like it would help people develop more in an environment where there were more specialists for either role!
@rowmyboat (I mean, I'm sure there are some big shops that have experts in both, but in general I feel like with a limited budget you're not going to be able to cultivate two extremely different skill sets like that very well, plus you have to have all the equipment for both, etc.)
@sam I think around here it works because some of it is holdover from when there were small skiing spots in like every town, so there was a very local, large labor pool for it. AND we are also right at the center of of some high-profile biking. This is not going to be the case everywhere.
@rowmyboat that's a good point (for the specific example anyways), the specialization issues are probably a Georgia (and similar palces) thing (where there's a *huge* ski crowd, one of the biggest clubs in the country IIRC, but also no skiiing)
