JA Berry Hardware will come full circle next month when the Gunnedah business returns to its independent retail roots.

Owner-operator Dave Berry is ditching the Home Timber and Hardware franchise to deal direct with suppliers.

Driving the the change is a loss in faith in the catalogue industry.

“We don’t feel there is a future in catalogues anymore,” Mr Berry said.

“There’s too many people in that game now.

“We don’t think it’s financially viable.”

He said the overhead costs in the franchise were too great in today’s market and the change in name will make life “a lot easier”.

“We’re reinventing JA Berry as a true independent,” Dave said. 

But it’s not the first time the trader has run his own ship.

The business was independent in the early days even before the Thrifty Link franchise changed to the present operation in 2011.

The new name will be HBT – Homeware and Building Traders, whose company motto reads: “Keeping independents, independent”.

The HBT website describes its itself as a “private company owned by the people who set it up and run it. 

“It is managed to benefit the member stores by lowering their buying prices. We aren't a typical buying group. You don't have to buy shares or take any responsibility. There's none of the bureaucracy or politics that groups like this sometimes suffer from.”

JA Berry will start trading as HBT from June.