A Brief History of Shopping and the Independent Shopkeeper, the Development of Shopping, Shops and Stores

A Busy Supermarket Checkout

A History of Shopping and Shopping with Shops, Stores and Supermarkets

In most towns or villages there is usually at least one shop within reasonable distance of where people live. Men and women who keep shops are known as shopkeepers and their occupation as shopkeeping. As we know it today shopkeeping has developed through a number of different stages. The earliest form was the market that was held in important centres where roads crossed and goods could easily be exchanged. At the same time craftsmen working in their own homes would use the front room of the house as a shop where they sold the products they were making. Both these forms of trading are still quite common: many towns in the United Kingdom have markets and many old-established shops sell goods made on or near the premises.

The next step forward was made when the market traders took on permanent premises. No other great changes took place until the beginning of the 19th century. Up until then the shopkeeper had been a specialist - for example, if he was a grocer he sold groceries only, and made no attempt to sell other types of goods; if he was a draper he did not interest himself in foodstuffs.

Shopping with Department Stores - A History of Shopping
However, about 1820 shops were being started in Britain which sold many different types of goods all under one roof. The first really big department store (the type of big shop which has many departments, each selling a different type of goods) was opened in Paris about 1850. The first big department store in London was William Whiteley's which started as a small drapery shop in 1863. Within 20 years, however, it had grown and grown until Whiteley could call himself "the universal provider". Other shopkeepers followed his example and all the big cities in Britain now have their department stores.

At the same time the multiple store grew up. A multiple store is simply an organization that controls a large number of shops; for example, Boots the Chemist, Dixons and PC World are multiple stores. The buying of goods for all the shops is done by one set of people and this saves an enormous amount of time and money. Many firms claim to have been the first in this field but probably Thomas Lipton, who started as a grocer in Glasgow in 1876, was actually the first. From one small grocery shop this firm grew to such an extent that it controlled factories making the foodstuffs it sold and even owned plantations abroad where tea and other things are grown for sale in the firm's shops.

A History of Shopping - Variety Stores
Another type of shop was the variety store like Woolworth's or Marks and Spencer's. Their great success in the early days depended on the fact that they purchased very large quantities of goods and sold them quickly at a cheap price. Until World War II made everything very much more expensive, Woolworth's never sold anything that cost more than sixpence.

Shopping with Supermarkets - A History of Shopping
Supermarkets started out as simply large collective markets under one roof selling a broad range of groceries, fruit and vegetables. Nowadays, they are almost department stores in themselves as the ever-increasing trend is to sell electrical goods, house and homewares, gardening products and clothing. This was a natural progression by supermarkets and keenly sought by the customer wanting to do as much shopping as possible in the same place. Using their major brand names like Tesco, Sainsburys and ASDA, and by careful use of huge advertising budgets, they easlily attracted more and more shoppers into their stores.

A History of Shopping - Shopping with Co-operative Shops
Another very important type of shop was the co-operative store. The first of its kind was started in Rochdale (Lancashire) in 1844 when a group of people got together and decided to run their own shop so that any profit they made could be shared out among them every so often. It was not long before there were co-operative shops all over Britain.

Independent Shopkeepers - A History of Shopping
In spite of the growth of department stores, multiple stores, variety stores and co-operatives, the independent shopkeeper - the man or woman who owns their own shop with no branches - is still an important trader.

The goods sold by shopkeepers arrive in their shops in all sorts of ways. The independent shopkeeper sometimes buys his goods direct from the manufacturers, but generally he obtains them from wholesale merchants. These are merchants who sell goods only to shopkeepers, never direct to the general public. The wholesaler could be called the shopkeepers' shop. Because the wholesale merchant keeps a wide variety of goods it is possible for the shopkeeper (who is often called the retailer) to pick and choose what he will offer his customers, and this enables him to give them a far wider choice than if he bought direct from the manufacturers.

The department stores, multiple stores and variety stores do buy their goods from the manufacturers. This cuts out the cost of going through a wholesaler and therefore enables them to sell at lower prices than the independent shopkeepers. People sometimes wonder how the independent shopkeeper can compete successfully against the big organisations. There are two main reasons for his success. One is that his shop is often near his customers' homes, whereas the shops of the big organisations are usually some distance away, so it is much easier for people to reach the small shop than the big one. The other reason is that the small shopkeeper often knows his customers personally, and therefore knows their likes and dislikes. They find his shop a more friendly place than the big shops. Most people, driven by the desire to pay the least possible price, use all kinds of shops, finding in one what they cannot find in another.