While it’s hard to imagine today, the shopping cart received a cool reception
when it first debuted. But thanks to creator Sylvan Goldman’s gumption, it
eventually became a mainstay of supermarkets. By Hannes Breustedt
Sylvan Goldman was convinced that his idea was going to conquer the world of shopping.
On June 4, 1937, the Oklahoma City businessman unveiled his creation to the public. “It’s new. It’s sensational,” proclaimed the owner of the supermarket chain Humpty Dumpty in a newspaper ad.
It showed a woman, slumped over in exhaustion, carrying her shopping basket. This scene, the ad promised, will soon be a thing of the past. Why? Because of this new invention, so simple and yet brilliant: the shopping cart.
Today, one can no longer imagine a retail store or supermarket without the shopping basket mounted on wheels. But at the time, it took some convincing for people to use the newfangled vehicle.
In fact, as sociologist and market researcher Catherine Grandclement writes in her doctoral thesis about the history of shopping carts: “Unfortunately, the introduction was a flop.”
Among the start-up problems, young men would avoid the cart so as not to give the impression that they were too weak to carry a shopping basket. Women likewise were dismissive because the shopping cart reminded them of a baby buggy and therefore seemed old-fashioned. Older shoppers, however, were thankful for the help on wheels.
Goldmann was not to be discouraged about the initial cool reception, so he resorted to a clever marketing ploy: He hired attractive female models to push their carts around the store and encourage other shoppers to try it as well. Soon, the shopping cart was off and running. From the south-western US city in Oklahoma, the cart would usher in a shopping revolution throughout the United States.
In September 1937, Goldman attended the first industry meeting, the “super market convention,” to propagate his invention. But even here, the reception was hostile. Supermarket owners were afraid the cart posed a safety hazard and that little children sitting in them could get hurt. Undaunted, Goldman came up with a new idea – producing a film to advertise his invention. This time, it struck a nerve. Supermarkets placed huge orders for it, and he made his fortune.
To be sure, his product from back then is greatly different from today’s shopping carts, which have meanwhile solved the issue of child safety by having built-in children’s seats. In his biography titled “The Cart that Changed the World: The Career of Sylvan N. Goldman,” writer Terry Wilson described the moment of Goldman’s brainstorm. The year was 1936 and Goldman was sitting his office, looking at two folding chairs there.
He thought, why not combine the two chairs facing each other, put wheels on their legs, with shopping baskets placed on the seats in between? Together with a mechanic, Fred Young, he began tinkering with the idea, and their first shopping cart was a metal frame holding two wire baskets. Goldman initially called it the “folding basket carrier” because the inspiration was taken from the folding chairs.
The idea was not just meant for customer comfort. Goldman’s hope was that shoppers would be able to use the cart to purchase more items.
But, as is so often the case with great inventions, there is a dispute over who had the idea first. Grandclement’s research shows that by the mid-1930s, there had been various, similar ideas.
But beyond dispute is that in 1940, Goldman was awarded the first patent for the shopping cart. His idea would be improved on in later years. And he had to concede defeat in a patent dispute with another US inventor, Orla E. Watson, over the design, still used today, of the rear swinging door that allows shopping carts to be telescoped into each other to save space. – DPA
Though now a common commodity at any grocery store, shopping carts were a flop when they first debuted. Young men would avoid the cart so as not to give the impression that they were too weak to carry a shopping basket.
