#08 Esther Rose | HGA

Check out their fundraising page here!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SHOPPING CART:

An Intersection between Great Design and Good Problem Solving

Josh Shelton

Sylvan Goldman was born in 1898 to a family of Jewish Oklahoma Sooners. His father had recently immigrated to America from Latvia and led the family westward in search of opportunities promised by a new frontier. Goldman would later capitalize on these opportunities by having an unprecedented impact on the American grocery industry. 

During Goldman’s childhood, grocery shopping was a “general store” activity. Clerks would gather food goods in requested quantities and sell them to customers waiting behind the counter.

After graduating from college, Sylvan Goldman left Oklahoma to study new trends in retail and discovered a wealth of resources in California. Goldman developed a keen interest in the thriving west coast self-service grocery stores. He brought his newly acquired knowledge back to Oklahoma and with the assistance of his brother, developed a small chain of self service grocery stores — the first ever seen in his home state. Shoppers used wire woven baskets for gathering their own groceries and the small grocery chain began to grow. 

By the late 1920s, Goldman had sold a good portion of his grocery chain to Safeway. When the Great Depression hit, Goldman and his brother watched as their Safeway stock became worthless, virtually overnight. He rebounded soon after with a statement that may well define the simple, yet optimistic, sensibilities of post-depression entrepreneurship: “The wonderful thing about food is that everyone uses it — and only uses it once.” During the early 1930s, Goldman and his brother began buying Piggly Wiggly self-service grocery stores.

He soon realized that his problem as an entrepreneur was no different than the problem his customers faced while shopping. His problem identification outlined a simple equation:

Grocery chain grows weary = Customer’s arms grow weary

Must sell more food = Must carry less food

By identifying a shared problem of both entrepreneur and customer, Goldman began the good business of problem solving. As he leaned back in the folding chair of his office, his mind must have been racing — Piggly Wiggly must allow more groceries to become accessible to everyone while maximizing sales potential for itself. 

He grabbed the folding chair from under himself, snagged a wire basket and headed out to find Fred Young, his grocery store handy man. Young also worked in town as the neighborhood mechanic, and Goldman arrived at Young’s shop with a “kit of parts.” Goldman had partially solved the problem of efficient storage, but had not yet addressed increased volume and cart mobility.

They completed their first prototype in 1937 and had several made for use in the Oklahoma City Piggly Wiggly grocery stores.

He hired pretty women to pose as Midwestern housewives and push his new carts from aisle to aisle, slowly filling each basket with food.

The advantages of using shopping carts soon caught on. By creatively shaping context to share an idea, Goldman allowed customers to discover the new cart for themselves. Soon, no man or woman was shopping without his grocery cart. Today, over 25 million shopping carts fill our retail stores and parking lots. With exception of the automobile, shopping carts remain the most used vehicle in the world.

Shipping costs vary.