The village of Pavlovo was a center of cottage production of iron goods. Since ancient times it was famous for its skillful metalworking, which arose on the basis of mining local bog ores. The products of Pavlovo craftsmen were well known not only in the country, where they virtually had no competition, but also abroad.
Nizhny Novgorod was a major fair center. This opened up enormous opportunities for organizing выгодные закупки продукции for members of the society, as well as for marketing the products being manufactured. In the province there were many enterprises connected with metal mining and processing and the manufacture of metal goods. The forested region had excellent craftsmen in woodworking. 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 households of both 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 of fateful importance 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 the previously scattered consumer societies of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, was laid at the Nizhny Novgorod provincial cooperative congress on September 12–20, 1915, when a Commission for organizing the Union was elected.
February 16, 1916 is considered the birthday of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Consumer Union.
On October 12, 1917, at a general meeting of authorized representatives, the товарищество 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 achieved a combined turnover of 15 million rubles in 1917; in 1918 this amount increased to 20 million rubles.
In 1919, Pavlovo received city status; Pavlovsky Uyezd was formed, which in 1929 was преобразован into a district.