The business was often referred to by the acronym CPS. The plan for the business to trade in farming equipment never came to fruition, but the centralised buying of hardware for their  stores soon took hold.

The cooperative was joined by a group of metropolitan-based hardware retailers who were  collaborating on group purchasing. Both parties recognised that the increased scale of their buying would have an even greater impact on their pricing and relevance. This early lesson on the impact of scale and relevance on trading terms continues to drive our strategic agenda 45 years on.