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.
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.
Automatic
Doors Horton Automatics developed and
sold the first automatic sliding door in America in 1960. The company co-founders
Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt invented the sliding automatic door in 1954.
Their automatic doors used a mat actuator.
"The idea came to Lew Hewitt
and Dee Horton to build an automatic sliding door back in the mid-1950's,
when they saw that existing swing doors had difficulty operating
in Corpus Christi's winds. So the two men went to work inventing an automatic
sliding door that would circumvent the problem of high winds and their
damaging effect. Horton Automatics Inc. was formed in 1960, placing
the first commercial automatic sliding door on the market and literally
establishing a brand-new industry."
source
The
Horton Family - Automated Entry If Horton Automatics of Corpus Christi
has its way, homes in the United States will begin installing sliding automatic
doors, which company co-founders Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt invented in
1954. Their first door in operation was a unit donated to the City of Corpus
Christi for its Shoreline Drive utilities department. The first one sold
was installed at the old Driscoll Hotel for its Torch Restaurant.
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.
Bar
Codes The first patent for bar code (US
Patent #2,612,994) was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard
Silver on October 7, 1952.
Cash
Register In 1884, James Ritty invented what
was nicknamed the "Incorruptible Cashier" or the first working, mechanical
cash register.
Credit
Cards and Money Past, present and future, the history
of money.
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.
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.
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."
Shopping
Carts
