Byron Greenough’s retail business sold hats, caps, footwear, furs, and fancy goods, a term for novelty items or accessories. A very successful venture, at its peak Byron Greenough & Co. employed about a dozen retail clerks, several traveling salesmen, and as many as fifty young women and girls who crafted the products. The business bought and sold fur pelts and distributed their goods throughout Northern New England and Eastern Canada; and worked with various pelt types, including otter, lynx, fitch (weasel), squirrel, and especially beaver.

This advertisement for Greenough & Co. at their Middle St. location appeared inside a custom-made cylinder-shaped box used to store a Greenough & Co. fur muff.