Here is a retail chain with thousands of locations and almost no stores.
That is not a riddle. The company headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana does not own the hardware stores carrying its name.
Each of those stores is owned by a local person or family. They set their own prices, decide their own hours, choose their own inventory and keep their own profits.
What they share is a purchasing organization that they collectively own.
It is a cooperative, and it is one of the least understood and most durable business structures in American commerce.
It is also the reason a hardware store in a town of four thousand people can sell the same products at competitive prices as a national big box two hours away.