Selling Room Features is the Future | By Pierre Boettner

It’s hard to imagine a time before shopping carts, but it really wasn’t that long ago. Sylvan Goldman, who owned a number of grocery stores in post-Depression America was the mastermind behind the shopping cart. His was a business problem to solve. The stores were suffering, and he needed shoppers to buy more groceries. In order to do this, however, they needed a tool that would be functional (to keep their arms from tiring) and, ideally, would encourage the purchase of a few more products without the carts becoming too big for the store space. As we all know, the shopping cart, which began rather small, has evolved over time to fit the way that consumers use the grocery store. Now, shoppers fill baskets—both at the grocery store and online—to the brim. Goldman would likely be shocked at how the cart has evolved, but the point is that he saw a problem and created a solution that would allow shoppers to get more of what they want, and, in turn, he increased his business.