In 1925, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) established a Development Department in its London offices with the intent to modernize the company’s fur trade. Although never numbering more than 14 employees and disbanding its work in 1931, the department’s mission was nevertheless ambitious: to see breakthroughs in science and technology modernize the company’s wide range of imports from North America, and widen its consumer base in new marketing strategies. These initiatives fall into the conference theme of collaboration in Business History. The development department relied on cooperation between the HBC and its numerous affiliated fur suppliers, buyers, auction houses and, especially, retailers. Managed by Charles Townsend, the former development manager at Lever Brothers, the company’s own initiatives in development worked with government, technological partners and retailers to persuade customers, especially from London storefronts and in advertisements, to purchase products that benefited from modern chemical and technological treatments. However, the same department cultivating greater cooperation among its partners turned to its history to brand its new products. Only a few years earlier, the company celebrated its 250th anniversary, launching the Beaver as an in-house staff publication, a substantial published company history and a film documentary. The Development Department quite explicitly marketed the company’s heritage in its new products: as London’s premier and oldest fur company, its furs genuinely traced to Canada’s north, and its business integral to Canada’s own national history. Most importantly, the company showcased its long history as proof of its superior, more just and uninterrupted paternal support for Canada’s Indigenous people. Townsend’s office, then, coordinated inputs from numerous private and public sector entities to market new products, but fundamentally drew on the company’s heritage to brand them.