History of the shopping cart
Did you know we invented the original?* Check out the history of the shopping cart
1937
Back in the spring of 1937 a resident of Oklahoma City, OK named Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart. You know, the original wire basket on wheels. He was the owner of the area Standard Food Markets and Humpty Dumpty Supermarkets. While observing his shoppers struggling with their heavy metal shopping baskets he had an idea. In his office he had a couple of wood folding chairs. He mounted them on wheels and sat the shopping basket in the chair. The first shopping cart was born.
Goldman was disappointed at the public’s acceptance of the shopping cart at first. Young men thought they might appear weak, older people didn’t want to look helpless, and young women felt the carts were a little unstylish.
To rectify the situation Mr. Goldman hired male and female models of various ages to push the carts around his stores, pretending they were shopping. A store greeter told customers how to use the new devices and the rest became history.
1940
Goldman began manufacturing shopping carts by the end of 1937. By 1940 Goldman had a 7 year waiting list for new shopping carts. Goldman's concept was simple: make shopping easier for the customer and they’ll visit the store more frequently, and buy more. Since they were inspired by the folding chair, Goldman called his carts “folding basket carriers.” Basically, they were folding metal frames with handles and wheels. Customers could place hand-held baskets on the carriers, and take them off again at checkout. This was a little awkward so as time went on Goldman made improvements to his invention.
1947
With ten years of cart manufacturing under his belt Goldman introduced an improved product. The “nest cart” was a shopping cart that stored easily by “nesting” inside the next cart in line. By the 1950s, many variations of the nest cart were in use. It's the standard of the industry today, and demanded by shopping cart buyers. Today there are 30 to 35 million shopping carts in the U.S. and 1.25 million new ones are manufactured each year. That's a lot of people enjoying an easier way to shop!
Why can’t it be as easy on the web?
1995
Now it can! Almost fifty years after Sylvan Goldman introduced the first modern shopping cart (not all that different from the ones we still use today) another shopping cart breakthrough was made. Mark Mumma, also an Oklahoma City resident, web site designer and ISP decided to abandon the search for an easy to use e-commerce shopping cart and set out to write his own. Enlisting the help of a long time friend and programmer work officially began on the Real Soft Shopping Cart, the predecessor to RealCart™.
The development of the cart arose out of necessity. With the web increasing in e-commerce Mumma frantically searched for a shopping cart that people could figure out and buy with. None of the ones on the net were very intuitive or straight-forward. There was a glaring need for a shopping system that is more instinctive and brainless to use.
1998
Work started on the company’s new web site and it began going up at RealSoft.com. Our price back then was $25.00 US for a Java applet accompanied by some simple templates and instructions. Immediately following the cart’s debut on September 2, 1997, it became an overnight sensation. Over 30 countries worldwide downloaded the cart and additional languages besides US English are added to the program. Our award winning tech support forum was created at DejaNews.com and also became an instant success!
Other sites started taking notice! CoolTool.com calls us a Cool Tool of the Day for 3 straight days and FileDudes.com gave us a Five Dude Rating. Our shopping cart went up to $50.00 US by the end of the year. The shopping cart now has a browser based installation assistant that makes it easier for web designers to add the cart to their site.
1999
By the beginning of 1999 thirteen languages reside in the lines of code comprising the cart making it the perfect choice for foreign as well as domestic on-line stores to sell to bigger audiences. Our $50 shopping cart actually ‘spoke’ more languages than a $35,000.00 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited.
Swedish magazine PC+ calls us a Best Buy and OnLineOrders.net names us it’s first ever “Shopping Cart of the month”. Our shopping cart now sells for $99.00 US.
With the advent of e-commerce many programmers have tried to make on-line shopping a reality. Many of them have fallen miserably short of creating an easy, intuitive method of transacting business. These cryptic “so-called” shopping carts with confusing buttons like ‘show the cart’, ‘hide the cart’, ‘modify the cart’ and ‘recalculate the cart’ are more like shopping nightmares than shopping systems.
None of this is necessary with a real shopping cart and these buttons shouldn’t be things your shopper would have to know and understand to use a web shopping cart on your site. Now more than ever, new, first-time computer owners are coming to the net in droves. New users these days are new at computers let alone being ‘just new to the web’. Are they going to have the skill level required to figure out the shopping system on your site?
Sylvan Goldman set out to make it easier for people to buy more products from his store and he succeeded. RealCart™ is doing the same thing for on-line stores all over the internet. If you aren’t using RealCart™ you risk missing out on sales that you might not have to. Install the internet’s only e-commerce shopping cart that looks and works most like a real shopping cart. Make it easy to buy on your site with a shopping cart that lives up to the name. RealCart™!
2000
The best is yet to come. The current CEO of Microsoft® recently spoke those words on a national television ad campaign. That’s the attitude here at RealCart.com at the turn of the century. It’s an exciting time! Our V2 shopping cart now completely creates your store for you yet it is priced below $200.00 USD! You can list stuff on ebay.com with a single button. Of course, using eBay with our cart is optional. It has tons of other features you will enjoy even if you do not list products on eBay. You can provide on-line, real-time customer support as your web shopper enters your on-line store with HumanClick™
As if that weren’t enough... we also added the ability to use our shopping cart with any secure order provider no matter who you want to use. Authorize.net, WorldPay, Card Service International, Card Ready International and any other provider you care to use can now be seamlessly and affordably integrated into our product. You’re always compatible no matter who handles your merchant account. Or, don’t use a merchant account. The cart is fully capable of off-line orders as well as secure on-line credit card transactions.
We recently won Shopping Cart of the week for our second consecutive major version of our shopping cart. V2 is the best there is!
2001
Version 2.0 is given top honors by Winfiles.com. They say it’s a "Get It." a distinction that is given only to our shopping cart out of a collection of several dozen.
It’s been called the internet’s EASIEST shopping cart by a growing following of people. We now have an affiliate program.
The future for RealCart™ includes a deluxe CD Rom edition of our software as well as a printable PDF file users guide and a TV commercial which will debut sometime around late 2001 - early 2002 on RealCart.TV.
We’ve brought e-commerce to your cell phone. Want your cell phone to get a text message every time your cart makes a sale? It’s cool calling a customer from your car within seconds of him or her pressing the order button. It really freaks them out that you are that “on top of your game.” Our most recent enhancement is the addition of PayPal Web Accept as a means of accepting credit cards without a merchant account. Check it out here.
2002
Version 2.0.6.1 is given top honors by Tucows.com. This is the second year in a row that RealCart has been recognized as a highly effective shopping cart solution by a leading software download site. Tucows gave us a Five Cow rating!
The end of 2002 will mark completion of the courses section of a brand new site called RealCart University.
The new University site will assist powerusers of RealCart™ in their customization efforts. RealCart is built on an incredibly customizable format that allows all webmasters of varying skill levels to customize RealCart to their heart’s content. We are currently taking in new Case Studies so that we may prepare our courseware for our future students. To sign up for a Case Study please go here: http://casestudy.RealCartUniversity.com.
* “We” meaning “Oklahomans” of course. We weren’t actually born yet in 1937. Thought you should know.
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Rated 5 Stars
@FileTransit 9/7/2002
Rated 5 Cows
@TuCows
ZDNet 5 Stars
Yippee 5 Stars
The only shopping cart
to ever win a
from Winfiles.com
(now merged
with CNet downloads)
Rated 5 Dudes
@ FileDudes
Cool Tool
of the Day
Oct 30 & 31, 1998
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