The chain was established by businessman Mike Robertson who bought the Liskeard site in the early 1960s after moving to Cornwall following his wife's death.

The first Trago Mills store was at Liskeard and started life as a small shed, selling items founder Mike Robertson had bought on trips to larger towns some distance away.

The current Liskeard store, five miles west of the town just off the A38 at Two Waters Foot, has several acres of parkland and lakes, with several other local businesses on the site.

[6] In July 2022, the petrol station at the store became the cheapest place to purchase fuel in the UK, with prices there almost 25p cheaper than the national average, causing long queues on the nearby road.

After owning a former factory site in Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales for nearly a decade, work began on the new shopping centre in autumn 2016.

[8] Statues of local political figures and officials the owner believed were opposed to his development "welcome" shoppers to the Liskeard store.

[10][11] Trago still occasionally runs inflammatory copy within their ads, one entitled "For any cash strapped Moslems reading this…" appeared in the Falmouth Packet in 2009 to promote a book by senior UKIP official David Challice.

[14][15] In January 2007, the Mid Devon Star suggested this was hypocritical, as his large Newton Abbot site employed around 30 Polish people.

[17] The fine was reduced to £65,000 in January 2012, after an Exeter Crown Court judge accepted that Trago Mills had paid nearly £500,000 in clean-up costs.

[20] In the early 1980s, Trago Mills elected to design and build its own aircraft that could be sold to the British military as a trainer to replace the then ageing "Bulldog" fleet.