 No wholesale trade ever developed as all the merchants focussed their efforts on retail sales, which proved not to be very profitable in such a small village.In that sense, Haapamäki was geographically in a favorable place for wholesaling as it would have been easy to competitively ship goods to Virrat and Ruovesi in the west and Jyväskylä in the east.The development of the station fell mainly on the shoulders of the Finland's State Railways, as the municipality refused to do anything.