The village of Pavlovo was a center of cottage production of iron goods. Since old times, it was famous for its skilled metalworking, which arose on the basis of extracting local bog iron ores. The products of Pavlovo craftsmen were well known not only in the country, where they effectively had no competition, but also abroad.
Nizhny Novgorod was a major fair center. This opened up enormous opportunities for organizing profitable purchases of goods for members of the society, as well as for marketing the products being manufactured. Many enterprises were located in the province, connected with metal extraction and processing and the manufacture of metal products. The forest region had excellent craftsmen in wood processing. In Vyksa, a working class of metallurgists took shape. In Pavlovo and Gorbatov, generations of artisans lived who produced tools and household goods: shovels, pitchforks, sickles, files, knives, locks, and many other items needed in the daily life of rural residents and townspeople. From the 1890s, the Nizhny Novgorod cooperative movement began to expand.
Consumer cooperation became one of the founders of the wholesale Nizhny Novgorod Fair (the “pocket of Russia”). This trade and industrial fair became the site of an event crucial for the entire consumer cooperative movement of the country: in August 1896, representatives of 28 societies created the All-Russian center of consumer cooperation, which became the predecessor of today’s Tsentrosoyuz.
The beginning of the organization of the Nizhny Novgorod Union of Consumer Cooperatives, which united disparate consumer societies in the Nizhny Novgorod province, was laid at the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Cooperative Congress on September 12–20, 1915, when a Commission for Organizing the Union was elected.
The birthday of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Consumer Union is considered to be February 16, 1916.
On October 12, 1917, at a general meeting of authorized representatives, the partnership was transformed into the “Union of Consumer Societies of the Nizhny Novgorod District”.
By the end of 1918, it already united 800 consumer societies and posted a total turnover of 15 million rubles for 1917, and in 1918 this amount increased to 20 million rubles.
In 1919, Pavlovo received city status; Pavlovsky Uyezd was formed, which in 1929 was reorganized into a district.