Today is Shopping Cart Day. 10 things you might not know about shopping trolleys:
They’re called shopping carts in the USA, shopping trollies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and some regions of Canada. There are also local variations like barrae or coohudder in Scotland, wagon in New York and Hawaii, or buggy in Southeast Michigan and Western Pennsylvania.
The shopping trolley was invented by Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty Supermarket chain in Oklahoma, and also the Piggly Wiggly, the world’s first supermarket. Sat in his office, trying to work out ways of getting people to buy more stuff, he hit on the idea of putting a basket on a folding chair and adding wheels.
His idea wasn’t immediately successful with customers, despite his strategy of placing a pretty girl at the entrance to the shop with the trolleys, encouraging people to take one. Men were too proud to admit they’d rather not lug round a heavy basket while women thought they were too much like baby carriages.
So Goldman tried hiring attractive people to push trolleys around the shop, pretending to be regular customers, in the hope people would see how useful they were. Eventually, the idea caught on.
Goldman was right about the trolley encouraging people to buy more. Studies have shown that customers cover more of the shop at a slower rate if they’re using a trolley rather than carrying a basket. With a shopping cart, people buy at least 14 items, while a basket user will purchase around 6 or 7 items. People not using any equipment at all buy around 2 items.
The swing door that opens to allow trolleys to stack was invented by Orla Watson in 1946.
They can be dangerous. As of 2006, approximately 24,000 children are injured in the United States each year in shopping cart related accidents.
Studies have found that trolley handles are among the most germ ridden things you can touch. Only playground equipment and the armrests on public transportation harbour more germs.
Almost every major city has one or more companies whose sole business is to retrieve and return abandoned shopping trolleys to their rightful owners for a small fee.
Whole Foods grocery chain is experimenting with a motor driven shopping cart that follows you around the shop.
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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