In the Humpty-Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City, was presented 80 years ago a Sensation – the shopping cart. Today, the cart on wheels the trade is indispensable, but in the beginning, the idea flopped.
Sylvan Goldman had no doubt that his idea would revolutionize the Shopping world. On 4. In June, 1937, presented the business man of Oklahoma City, his Innovation to the Public. “It is new – it’s sensational,” said the owner of the supermarket chain Humpty Dumpty by newspaper advertisement. The image of a by the Wear of your shopping cart, exhausted woman in the Ad promised that those hardships have heard of now a thing of the past. The solution was as simple as it is ingenious: The shopping cart.
However, when the cart-on-wheels is an integral part of the retail business and no longer from the supermarkets to imagine, at the time the customer need some convinced help. “Unfortunately, the launch was a Flop,” says a study by the sociologist and market researcher, Catherine Grandclément, which has dealt in the framework of their doctoral thesis with the history of the shopping cart. The people were not yet accustomed to the new auxiliary vehicle.
US shopping cart (Freeport, N.Y.)
Initially a Flop
In addition, there were other start-up difficulties. So shunned young men in the car, to avoid the impression that they were too weak to carry shopping baskets. Women responded sometimes also negative, because the new Shopping vehicle, to a stroller recalled, and as out of fashion. Only the older clientele took on the role of the appeal agent immediately with thanks.
But Goldman was not discouraged, and resorted to a clever Marketing ploy. To apply the new System, hired the businessman Models his shopping cart pushed by the stores and customers to do the animated, the same. Now the thing came out and was a great success. Of Oklahoma from the Shopping-Revolution should cover the whole of America.
Progress of the shopping carts with children seat
In September 1937, Goldman took advantage of the first industry, the “Super Market Convention”, to be product experts. But even here there was resistance at first. The supermarket operators were afraid that the shopping cart could be a security risk, and children hurt.
Folding chairs on wheels
The car should be equipped with child seats and even as a kind of indoor Bobbycar for a set of wheels for the young ones, suspected at the time, still none. Goldman responded to smart on the objections once again: He illustrated his idea with a promotional film and really hit the right nerve. Now you bought him in great style the shopping cart, he made a fortune.
A series of products from the world market leader Wanzl
The product difference back then is still strong by today’s Standard. In the biography “The car that changed the world: The career of Sylvan Goldman” is the story of the author Terry Wilson is the Moment of the brilliant, resourceful. One Afternoon in 1936, were Goldman, therefore, two folding chairs in his office and him came up with the idea: If you combine two chairs and rollers would attach to the legs, so the baskets were placed on the seat surfaces and the whole thing will be around pushed. He hoped to be able to customers to sell more.
Obstetrician of the shopping cart, the Goldman developed with his assistant Fred Young, was the folding chair. But, as so often the case with great inventions, is also in this case, a controversial one, who first had the firing incident. Grandcléments research showed that since the mid-1930s, several similar concepts. It is established that Goldman in 1940, was granted the first Patent. Then the idea was developed by others.
XXL model in use at the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada
World market leader with a stack of goods
In the case of today’s usual type in which to place a series of save the parked shopping carts may be pushed together, gave Goldman after a long patent dispute with the American inventor Orla e.Watson small.
In Germany the shopping cart along with self-service supermarkets, starting in 1948 and widespread. As a leading figure in the in the February 2011 deaths entrepreneurs Rudolf Wanzl is in the country. He secured from 1950, the first German patents – first of all, to a stackable shopping basket with hinged bracket and rollers, then on the basic concept of what should be the car to classic shopping. Of the around 100 years old, the Wanzl group from Leipheim is today, according to its own figures, with around two million-selling shopping the world’s market leader car per year.