This paper, based on our chapter in the forthcoming collection <em>A Special Kind of Business: The Cooperative Movement 1950-2010...and Beyond</em>, edited by Louis Galambos and Franco Amatori, compares and evaluates the business strategies of the British and Swedish consumers' co-operative movements since 1950. Specifically, it chronicles the experience of two key co-operative organizationsthe UK's Co-operative Group (formerly the Co-operative Wholesale Society, CWS) and Sweden's Kooperativa Förbundet (KF)as they faced the challenges of modernization during an era of growing consumer spending power and increased competition from larger, increasingly multinational investor-led retail corporations. We use a cross-national comparison to challenge the common "narrative of decline" often applied to studies of European co-operatives in this period and to explore the impact of internal and external environments on co-operative business strategies.