Shopping
Mall Overview
The
Mall
A shopping center, shopping mall, or shopping plaza,
is the modern adaptation of the historical marketplace. The mall
is a collection of independent retail stores, services, and a
parking area, which is conceived, constructed, and maintained by a separate
management firm as a unit. They may also contain restaurants,
banks, theaters, professional offices, service stations
etc.
The first shopping mall was the
Country Club Plaza, founded by the J.C. Nichols Company and opened near
Kansas City, Mo., in 1922. The first enclosed mall called Southdale opened
in Edina, Minnesota (near Minneapolis) in 1956. In the 1980s, giant megamalls
were developed. The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, opened in 1981
- with more than 800 stores and a hotel, amusement park, miniature-golf
course, church, "water park" for sunbathing and surfing, a zoo
and a 438-foot-long lake.
Shopping Carts
Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping cart in 1936. Sylvan owned
a chain of Oklahoma City grocery stores called Standard/Piggly-Wiggly.
He invented the first shopping cart by adding two wire basket and wheels
to a folding chair. Goldman, together with mechanic Fred Young, later
designed a dedicated shopping cart in 1947 and formed the Folding Carrier
Co. to manufacture the carts.
In 1946, Orla Watson, of Kansas
City, MO, invented the telescoping shopping cart. By using hinged baskets,
each shopping cart fitted into the shopping cart ahead for compact storage.
The telescoping shopping carts were first used at Floyd Day's Super Market
in 1947.
Shopping Carts
Smart Cart
Silicon Valley inventor George Cokely - the same guy behind the Pet Rock
- has come up with a modern solution to one of the supermarket industry's
oldest problems: stolen shopping
carts. It's called Stop Z-Cart. The wheel of the shopping
cart hold the device which contains a chip and some electronics, when
the cart is rolled over a certain distance away from the store, the shopping
cart owners know about it.
Shopping Cart Bumpers with Advertising
Harold Evans patented (US patent #5,306,033) a shopping cart bumper system,
a foam wrap-around unit that protects while providing valuable advertising
space.
Mail
Order Catalog
Aaron Montgomery Ward sent out
his first mail order catalog in 1872 - for his Montgomery Ward
mail order business located at Clark and Kinzie Streets in Chicago.
The first catalog consisted of a single sheet of paper with a
price list, 8 by 12 inches, showing the merchandise for sale with ordering
instructions.
"Ward's gradually expanded
the catalog. They became bigger, more heavily illustrated, chock
full of goods-- often referred to as "dream books" by rural
families."
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on Feb. 17, 1844 and died on Dec. 7, 1913.
He first worked for Marshall Field, a department store, as both
a store clerk and a traveling salesman. As a traveling salesman, he realized
that his rural customers could be better served by mail-order,
a revolutionary idea. He started his business with only $2,400 in capital.
Montgomery Ward was a mail-order only business until
1926, when the first Montgomery Ward retail store opened in Plymouth,
Indiana.
Coupons
A Philadelphia pharmacist
named Asa Candler invented the coupon in 1895. Candler bought
the Coca-Cola company from the original inventor Dr. John Pemberton, an
Atlanta pharmacist. Candler placed coupons in newspaper for a
free Coke from any fountain - to help promote the new soft drink.
Department Stores
According to Hoover's online,
"Bloomingdale's was founded in 1872 by brothers Lyman and Joseph
Bloomingdale, the store rode the popularity of the hoop skirt
to sales success and practically invented the department store
concept at the beginning of the 20th century. Bloomingdale's joined the
Federated corporate family in 1930."
In 1877, John Wanamaker opened "The Grand Depot" a six story
round department store in Philadelphia. According to Andrew Maykuth Online,
"John Wanamaker never claimed to have invented the department store,
but he was on the cutting edge of a trend. The retail giants of the day,
Marshall Field in Chicago, Alexander T. Steward in New York, were discovering
that the vast power of buying wholesale could cut costs to reduce retail
prices." John Wanamaker is credited with developing one of the first
(if not the first) true department stores in the country, and with creating
the first White Sale, modern price tags, and the first in-store restaurant.
He also pioneered the use of money-back guarantees and newspaper ads to
advertise his retail goods.
- John Wanamaker (1838-1922)
Pioneer of department stores
In 1868, Mormon leader Brigham
Young, founded Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZMCI) in Salt
Lake City, which some historians credit as being the first department
store however, most historians give the credit to John Wanamaker. According
to the Pioneers, "ZCMI first sold clothing, dry goods,
drugs, groceries, produce, shoes, trunks, sewing
machines, wagons, and machinery. It was thus a department
store from the very start and ZCMI claims to be America’s first
full-fledged department store at birth."
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Baby
Used Car History
