Perth, 1914.

Wesfarmers began as a co-operative for the farmers of Western Australia. English Wikipedia says Westralian Farmers Co-operative Limited was formed in 1914 by the Farmers’ and Settlers’ Association of Western Australia, to take over the assets of the West Australian Producers’ Union and to supply services and merchandise to the state’s rural community. The first word of the name was a local coinage: Wikipedia explains that “Westralian” is a blend of “western” and “Australian”. The company was known for decades as Westralian Farmers Limited, and Wesfarmers is the clipped form of those two words.

The co-operative worked through a network. Wikipedia says that by 1919 local co-operative companies across the state were acting as agents for Westralian Farmers. In 1924, it adds, the company set up the radio station 6WF in Perth, which passed to the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1929 and became today’s ABC Radio Perth.

By the 1940s the business had spread well beyond farm supplies. Wikipedia quotes a description of the company of that time as wheat and general merchants; country distributors for Commonwealth Oil Refineries; wool, livestock, skin and produce auctioneers; grain and fruit exporters; insurance underwriters; and acquiring agents for the state’s wheat pool. It had premises in the Perth city centre, including on Wellington Street, and in Fremantle.

Transport followed. Wikipedia says Wesfarmers bought Ashburton Transport in 1949 and the competing Gascoyne Trading Company the following year, combining the two to supply the north-west of Western Australia. The trucks carried wool and mail, and brought bananas south from Carnarvon to Perth before heading back north with stores and mail. Wikipedia credits Gascoyne Trading with bringing refrigerated transport to the region. The company that would later own hardware sheds and department stores was, in these years, a farm agent, a trader, an auctioneer and a carrier, all under a name that said where it came from and whom it served.

From co-op to listed company.

Industry came before retail. Wikipedia says that in 1979 Wesfarmers took a controlling interest in CSBP, the fertiliser and chemicals maker that succeeded Cuming Smith, a business established in 1872, and that in 1986 it bought the remaining stake from BP to take full ownership. The company lists chemicals and fertilisers among its businesses today.

The name changed with the structure. In 1984, Wikipedia says, Westralian Farmers Co-operative formed Wesfarmers Limited, turning from a co-operative into a public company, and the new company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange on 15 November 1984. At first the co-operative kept a majority of the ordinary shares, so that its farmer members kept control, and the rest went to members. The short form of the name, already in use, became the name of the listed company.

The farming side of the business carried the name for some years more. Wikipedia says Wesfarmers bought Dalgety Farmers in January 1993, and the merged rural agency and merchandise business traded as Wesfarmers Dalgety until it was renamed Wesfarmers Landmark in March 2001. Landmark, which Wikipedia describes as the company’s foundation business, was sold to AWB Limited in August 2003. In 2001, it adds, Wesfarmers became a freely traded listed company with open ownership, bringing the era of co-operative control to an end.

Records of the older company went to the archive. Wikipedia says that in 1991 a large deposit of Westralian Farmers Co-operative papers was placed with the J S Battye Library in Perth. By the time the rural agency left the group, the word Wesfarmers no longer named a co-operative of farmers at all: it named a Perth-based listed company whose public faces were about to be shops.

A name, a structure and a shopfront.

Retail and telecom names across Japan, Australia and Africa tend to come from a small set of sources. Some carry a founder’s surname, sometimes in the plural when a family of brothers or partners started the business together. Others are coined words built from Latin or English roots, chosen to sound settled and durable rather than to describe a product. A third group joins two everyday words into one, so that a service name reads as a single compound rather than a description. Acronyms also recur, especially where a company began as a network or a division with a long formal title.

For a design reader the more useful pattern is how these identities travel. A shop name has to work on a fascia board seen from across a car park, on a till receipt, on a carrier bag and on an app icon. A telecom mark has to sit on a SIM card no bigger than a thumbnail, on a scratch-off airtime voucher, on a kiosk umbrella and on a phone screen. Many of these companies settle on a single house colour and apply it everywhere, so that the colour does the work of recognition even where the wordmark is too small to read.

The owner behind the shop names.

The first retail name was a family one. BBC News, reporting on 18 January 2016, said Bunnings was founded in 1886 by the brothers Arthur and Robert Bunning, who had left London to settle in Perth. Wikipedia says Wesfarmers took a minority stake in February 1987 and reached full ownership in January 1994, so that Bunnings has been a Wesfarmers business since then. In 2016, the BBC reported, Wesfarmers bought the British DIY chain Homebase and planned to rebrand its UK sites under the Bunnings banner. Wikipedia says Homebase was sold to Hilco in May 2018 and that the stores already converted were to return to the Homebase name.

The move that made Wesfarmers a retail group came in 2007. ABC News reported on 2 July 2007 that the board of Coles had recommended a takeover offer from Wesfarmers, which it described as the Perth-based owner of the Bunnings hardware chain. Managing director Richard Goyder said he was pleased the board backed Wesfarmers’ proposal “to own and operate all of Coles’ businesses”. The Age wrote on 3 July 2007 that the deal would turn the Perth-based industrial conglomerate into a predominantly retail company, and that it would be carried out through a scheme of arrangement.

Two shop names from that deal stayed with Wesfarmers. Wikipedia says Kmart in Australia was established in 1969, with a first store at Burwood East in Victoria, and that Officeworks was set up by Coles Myer in 1994; both are now Wesfarmers businesses. Coles itself did not stay: PerthNow and 7News Perth reported on 15 November 2018 that the supermarket chain had been spun off from its parent, Wesfarmers,.

Wesfarmers Limited remains headquartered in Perth, and the company says its businesses span home improvement, general merchandise and apparel, office and technology products, health, chemicals and fertilisers, and industrial and safety products. The shopfronts carry other names; the owner’s name still recalls a 1914 co-operative of Western Australian farmers.

For a design guide, Wesfarmers shows how a place-and-people name can be clipped into one word and kept as a corporate signature while the brands customers see, from Bunnings to Kmart, keep their own. Compare Bunnings, the Perth hardware name founded by two brothers, and AEON, another retail group behind many shop names. For this guide we use wheat, paddock and swan with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Wesfarmers’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.