It’s hard to imagine a trip to the grocery store without grabbing a shopping cart. Today, they’re as common as automatic doors and checkout lanes. But when the shopping cart first appeared, shoppers wanted nothing to do with it.

The shopping cart was introduced in 1937 by Sylvan Goldman, owner of a grocery store chain in Oklahoma City. As customers purchased more items, Goldman realized that the small hand baskets they carried limited how much they could buy. His solution seemed simple: place two wire baskets on a folding chair mounted on wheels.

The invention worked exactly as planned—except for one unexpected problem.

People refused to use it.

Women complained it reminded them too much of pushing a baby stroller. Men thought it looked like a sign of weakness, saying they were perfectly capable of carrying their groceries. Many shoppers simply walked right past the new carts and continued balancing heavy baskets in their arms.

Goldman was baffled. He had solved a real problem, yet almost no one wanted his invention.

So he came up with an unusual marketing strategy. He hired attractive men and women to stroll through his stores, happily pushing shopping carts while pretending to shop. Curious customers watched, decided the carts didn’t look so bad after all, and gradually began using them themselves.

The idea caught on, and before long, shopping carts became a standard feature in supermarkets across the country.

The design didn’t stop evolving. In 1947, inventor Orla Watson introduced the nesting shopping cart, allowing carts to slide inside one another. That simple improvement made it much easier for stores to store dozens of carts without taking up valuable space—another design still used today.

Modern shopping carts now include child seats, cup holders, scanners, locking wheels, and even smart technology in some stores. Yet they all trace their roots back to one retailer trying to make shopping a little easier.

Bizarre Bonus: Early shopping carts weren’t rejected because they didn’t work—they were rejected because people worried about how they looked using them. Sometimes changing habits is harder than changing technology.

Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.

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