Shopping cart met resistance when first introduced

(WTYV) — Sylvan Nathan Goldman, an American businessman born November 1898, died November 1984. He invented the shopping cart.

He owned the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma in 1936, a time when grocery shopping was switching to the self-serve model. You wandered the story with your shopping basket to pick out what you wanted.

He noticed that women with babies and young children had trouble juggling a bag and the kids. He took a wooden folding chair, put a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs…but customers would not touch his new grocery cart.

Young women thought them unfashionable…young mothers said no, it looked too much like a baby carriage and young men said no way…pushing it made them sissies.

But then Goldman hired several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate how they worked and greeters to explain their use..and then they caught on.

Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding design shopping cart in the United States. Soon, he had metal shopping carts designed to fit into one another in long rows, the same design you’ll see today; there was no need to improve on it.

Goldman also invented the baggage cart.