Whose idea was the shopping trolley?
Quick Answer
Sylvan Goldman, who owned the Humpty Dumpty supermarkets in Oklahoma City, introduced it in 1937. Shoppers refused to use it at first, so he hired people to push trolleys around the store until customers followed.
The Full Story
Goldman noticed that customers stopped shopping once their hand-held baskets became too heavy. Inspired by a folding chair, he and mechanic Fred Young fitted two baskets onto a folding frame with wheels, and the first trolleys appeared in his Humpty Dumpty stores in June 1937. The public was not impressed. Men felt pushing one looked weak, and women said it reminded them of a pram. Goldman's answer was to hire models and people of different ages to wheel trolleys around the shop as if they were ordinary shoppers, and soon real customers copied them. The idea spread quickly, Goldman became very wealthy licensing his design, and later 'nesting' trolleys that slide into each other were developed by Orla Watson in the 1940s.
Key Facts
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