150 Fun Facts About Shopping

Southdale Center, the first fully enclosed US shopping mall, opened in 1956 in a suburb of which metro area?

Minneapolis–Saint Paul has harsh winters and hot summers, which was the point: Southdale, in suburban Edina, put its shops under one roof with heating and air-conditioning for year-round comfort.

Which Austrian-born architect designed Southdale Center and pioneered the enclosed regional mall in 1956?

Victor Gruen, born in Vienna in 1903, designed Southdale Center; he later disowned the suburban mall, decrying the 'land-wasting seas of parking' that surrounded his idea.

Which architect said Southdale had 'all the evils of the village street and none of its charm'?

Frank Lloyd Wright toured Southdale weeks after it opened in 1956 and asked, 'What is this, a railroad station or a bus station?'; its garden court still became the template for malls across America.

Piggly Wiggly, opened in Memphis in 1916, is remembered as the first grocery to do what?

Piggly Wiggly let customers serve themselves from open shelves instead of handing a list to a clerk; Clarence Saunders patented his 'self-serving store' layout in 1917.

How did Sylvan Goldman get wary shoppers to use his new shopping carts in 1937?

Hired models did it: men and women of various ages wheeled carts through his Oklahoma City stores pretending to shop, and real customers soon followed.

Sylvan Goldman built his first shopping cart prototype by adding a basket and wheels to what?

Goldman's prototype was a wooden folding chair with a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs; men thought the carts effeminate and women said they looked like baby carriages.

What was the first product scanned by UPC barcode at a checkout?

A pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum rang up at 67 cents in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, on 26 June 1974; a pack so small showed that a barcode could work on almost anything.

Who popularised 'Black Friday' for the day after Thanksgiving, describing the crowds and traffic?

Philadelphia police used 'Black Friday' in the early 1960s for the post-Thanksgiving crush of shoppers and traffic; the cheerier 'in the black' accounting story only spread in the 1980s.

Which organisation coined the term 'Cyber Monday' in a 2005 press release?

The National Retail Federation coined 'Cyber Monday' through its Shop.org arm in a November 2005 press release, suggesting that people back at work after Thanksgiving shopped online over faster office connections.

Singles' Day, China's giant annual online shopping festival, falls on which date?

11 November is written 11/11, and each numeral 1 looks like a 'bare stick', Chinese slang for an unattached man; the day began as a bachelors' joke in the 1990s before retailers took it up.

Which Chinese company turned Singles' Day, once a campus joke for bachelors, into a shopping festival in 2009?

Alibaba's Daniel Zhang recast the day in 2009 as a 24-hour online sale; by 2019 it was being described as the world's biggest one-day shopping event.

What was Amazon's original 1994 name, dropped after a lawyer misheard it as something morbid?

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra Inc. in July 1994; his lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver', and Bezos chose Amazon partly because a name starting with 'A' sat near the top of alphabetical lists.

Amazon Prime launched in 2005 with which perk for its $79 annual fee?

Two-day shipping was what Prime sold at its 2005 launch; streaming films and TV were added only in 2011.

What was the first item ever sold on eBay, back when it was still called AuctionWeb in 1995?

A broken laser pointer sold for $14.83; when Pierre Omidyar checked that the buyer knew it didn't work, the man replied that he collected broken laser pointers.

A PR manager invented the tale that eBay began so Omidyar's fiancée could trade which collectible?

Pez dispensers were a publicist's touch: eBay's PR manager made up the fiancée story in 1997 to interest reporters, and it stood until a 2002 book about the company revealed the truth.

The name 'eBay' is a shortening of what?

Echo Bay Technology Group was Omidyar's consulting firm; he wanted echobay.com, but a gold-mining company, Echo Bay Mines, already had that address, so he shortened it.

Walmart, Kmart and which other discount chain all opened their first stores in 1962?

Target opened in Roseville, Minnesota, in May 1962, weeks after the first full-size Kmart and two months before Sam Walton's first Wal-Mart; the Dayton department-store company launched it as a discount arm.

Walmart's home office is in which Arkansas city?

Walmart's home office is in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Sam Walton opened Walton's 5&10 on the town square in 1950; that original storefront became the Walmart Museum.

Before Walmart, Sam Walton ran a franchise of which variety-store chain in Newport, Arkansas?

Walton bought a Ben Franklin variety-store franchise in Newport in 1945 with a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law and $5,000 of Army savings, then lost the lease in 1950.

Which Costco food-court item cost $1.50 in both 1985 and 2024?

The hot dog combo, sold with a soda, had not gone up by 2024: when his future successor said it was losing money, co-founder Jim Sinegal reportedly told him, 'I will kill you. Figure it out.'

Costco's house brand, Kirkland Signature, takes its name from what?

The city of its former headquarters is Kirkland, Washington: the label launched in 1995, and a year later Costco moved to nearby Issaquah, so the name has outlived the address.

IKEA begins with Ingvar Kamprad's initials; what do the E and A stand for?

The farm and village where he grew up were Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd in Småland; IKEA began there in 1943 as a mail-order business, and furniture joined its range only five years later.

Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA at 17 with money his father gave him for what?

Good grades earned him the cash, a reward for doing well at school; he was already a seasoned trader, having sold matches from the age of five.

When Harrods unveiled England's first escalator in 1898, what were nervous customers offered at the top?

Brandy and smelling salts awaited shoppers at the top; the 'moving staircase' was really a sloping conveyor belt of woven leather, with no steps at all.

What did John Rendall and Ace Bourke buy from Harrods in 1969 and later release in Kenya?

The lion cub, named Christian, was bought from Harrods' pet department in 1969 and released in Kenya with George Adamson; footage of his 1971 reunion with the pair went viral decades later.

Which retail slogan is usually credited to Harry Gordon Selfridge or his old boss Marshall Field?

'The customer is always right' was a novel promise when 'let the buyer beware' was the rule in shops; Selfridge had worked for Field in Chicago before opening his London store in 1909.

What did John Logie Baird publicly demonstrate at Selfridges in 1925?

Moving images by television, mere silhouettes, were Baird's show for Selfridges shoppers over three weeks from 25 March 1925; the store loved such stunts and in 1909 had displayed Blériot's Channel-crossing plane.

Émile Zola's novel 'Au Bonheur des Dames' was inspired by which pioneering Paris department store?

Le Bon Marché was Zola's model: there Aristide Boucicaut let customers return goods for an exchange or a refund.

Pilot Jules Védrines landed a plane in 1919 on the roof of which Paris department store, famed for its glass dome?

Védrines set his Caudron G.3 down on the Galeries Lafayette roof on 19 January 1919 to win a 25,000-franc prize; the store's Boulevard Haussmann dome dates from 1912.

Macy's red star logo comes from a tattoo R. H. Macy got while working as what?

A whaler, the Emily Morgan, took Macy to sea at fifteen, and he came home with a red star tattoo; years later the star replaced his store's first emblem, a rooster.

With no central heating in its concourses, what keeps Mall of America warm?

Skylights, lighting and shoppers' body heat keep the Bloomington, Minnesota, mall near 70°F; even in winter its cooling systems may have to run at busy hours.

Dubai Mall, opened in 2008, stands adjacent to which landmark?

Burj Khalifa rises beside the mall in Downtown Dubai; in 2010 the mall's giant aquarium sprang a leak, sending water across the floor and forcing nearby shops to close.

James Ritty patented the first cash register in 1879 because employees at his what were pocketing takings?

Ritty ran a saloon in Dayton, Ohio, and patented his 'Incorruptible Cashier' in 1879 to stop bartenders skimming; John H. Patterson bought the business in 1884 and renamed it National Cash Register.

On a voyage to Europe, James Ritty got his cash register idea from a device counting what?

A steamship's propeller revolutions were tallied by a mechanism Ritty saw in 1878; back in Dayton he and his brother built a register with a clock-like dial whose hands showed dollars and cents.

In Diners Club lore, Frank McNamara dreamed up the card after which restaurant mishap?

He forgot his wallet at a New York grill in 1949, the story goes, and came back the next year to pay with a cardboard charge card; the company calls that meal 'The First Supper'.

In the 1960s, which shoppers' reward scheme boasted of issuing more stamps than the US Post Office?

S&H Green Stamps were handed out at supermarket and petrol-station tills; shoppers pasted them into booklets and traded full ones for housewares from the company's catalogue.

The earliest documented coupon, issued in 1888 for a free glass of its product, came from which company?

Asa Candler's Coca-Cola handed out tickets for a free glass from the late 1880s; by 1913 some 8.5 million had been redeemed, roughly one free drink for every nine Americans.

What did railway station agent Richard Sears start selling by mail in 1886, before teaming up with Alvah Roebuck?

Watches reached Sears by chance: a local jeweller refused a shipment sent to his Minnesota station, so Sears bought them and sold them on to other agents along the line.

The former F. W. Woolworth Company renamed itself in 2001 after which of its chains?

Foot Locker, Inc. became the name in 2001 once the old Woolworth company, briefly called Venator Group, had shut its American five-and-dimes and moved wholly into athletic footwear and clothing.

What film-inspired name did Amancio Ortega first give the shop that became Zara?

Zorba, after the film 'Zorba the Greek', was what Ortega called his 1975 A Coruña shop, but a bar two blocks away already had the name, so the sign's letters were rearranged to read Zara.

Boxing Day most likely takes its name from what?

Boxes of money or gifts given to tradesmen and servants after Christmas were known as Christmas boxes, the origin dictionaries give; church alms boxes opened that day are another suggestion.

Building of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar began in winter 1455-56, shortly after which event?

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 left Mehmed II a city to revive: he ordered a covered market for cloth and jewels, and its income was pledged to the Hagia Sophia mosque.

Since 1979, Trader Joe's has been owned by the German family behind which discount grocery chain?

Aldi Nord, Theo Albrecht's half of the family business, bought Trader Joe's in 1979; the Aldi shops in America belong to his brother Karl's separate Aldi Süd, so the two chains are run apart.

Target's mascot Bullseye is a white dog of which breed?

Bullseye is a white Bull Terrier with the Target logo painted round one eye in non-toxic makeup; since its 1999 debut the mascot has even earned a waxwork at Madame Tussauds in New York.

What was Kmart's 1965 promotion announced with 'Attention, Kmart shoppers' called?

The Blue Light Special used a flashing blue light, like a police car's, to announce a brief markdown on slow-selling goods; Kmart ran it from 1965 and retired it in 1991.

What do the letters in shopping channel QVC stand for?

QVC stands for Quality, Value, Convenience; Joseph Segel launched it in 1986 after cable companies were offered stakes in the business in exchange for carrying the channel.

The word 'escalator' was originally a registered trademark of which company before it was genericised?

Otis held 'Escalator' as a trademark until 1950, when a rival's challenge succeeded because Otis's own patents and adverts had used the word as an ordinary term for any moving staircase.

Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker is credited with which invention that spared shoppers from haggling?

The price tag is credited to Wanamaker, a devout Christian who held that if everyone was equal before God, everyone should be equal before price; he later ran the US Post Office.

Which supermarket technology made its debut in Kroger stores in 1986?

Self-checkout was patented by the Florida firm CheckRobot and unveiled at Kroger in 1986; shoppers scanned their own goods but still paid at a central cashier.

Jack Ma named Alibaba after a character from which collection of tales?

Ma chose Ali Baba, the woodcutter of 'One Thousand and One Nights', because the name was recognised worldwide; he founded the company with a group of friends in his Hangzhou apartment in 1999.

Which shopping phrase first appeared in print in the Chicago Tribune on Christmas Eve 1986?

Retail therapy made its debut when columnist Mary Schmich wrote of Americans 'nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy'; she later wrote the 'Wear Sunscreen' column that became a hit song.

What feature did Margaret E. Knight's 1871 machine give paper bags, letting them hold more?

Knight's 1871 patent folded and glued bags with flat bottoms so they stood open and held more; she won an interference suit against Charles Annan, who had copied her design.

The word 'mannequin' derives from a Flemish word meaning what?

'Mannequin' comes via French from the Flemish 'manneken', little man, as in Brussels' Manneken Pis; it named the jointed figures artists posed before it meant a shop-window dummy.

What nickname did critics give FDR's 1939 decision to move Thanksgiving a week earlier?

Critics dubbed the 1939 move 'Franksgiving'; Fred Lazarus Jr. of Federated Department Stores had lobbied for seven more shopping days, and Congress fixed Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November in 1941.

Which dolls sparked in-store riots among Christmas shoppers in 1983?

Cabbage Patch Kids each came with adoption papers, and in late 1983 shoppers fought in stores over the few on sale; Xavier Roberts had first offered his handmade Little People for 'adoption', never for sale.

The plush toy that peaked in Christmas 1996, reselling for up to $1,500, was based on which Sesame Street character?

Tyco's Tickle Me Elmo giggled and shook when squeezed; one Denver buyer allegedly paid $7,100 and a radio auction fetched $18,500 for charity.

Which retailer published the Christmas 'Wish Book' catalog, first issued in 1933?

Sears issued its first Christmas Wish Book in 1933, separate from its main 'Big Book' catalog; it shrank after the big catalog ended in 1993 and was brought back in print and online in 2017.

The Elf on the Shelf began as a 2005 book written by Carol Aebersold and whom?

Carol Aebersold wrote the book with her daughter Chanda Bell, who suggested turning the family's own Christmas tradition into a book; the elf flies to the North Pole nightly and returns to a new hiding spot.

PNC's tongue-in-cheek holiday price index tracks the yearly cost of what?

The gifts in 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' are priced one set at a time; PNC also adds up all 364 items the verses repeat, a far bigger bill it calls the True Cost of Christmas.

What is the retail term for stores putting out holiday merchandise well before the shopping season?

Christmas creep was first named in the mid-1980s; shops do it to stretch the selling season of what retailers call the 'golden quarter', the months when they hope to make most of their profit.

Which company grew out of the Kansas City stationery store that sold French envelope liners as gift wrap in 1917?

Hallmark traces its gift wrap to 1917, when Joyce and Rollie Hall ran out of coloured tissue and sold fancy French envelope linings instead; they sold again the next Christmas, then began printing their own.

What do US retailers call the last Saturday before Christmas?

Super Saturday, also called Panic Saturday, is the last Saturday before Christmas; shops pile on one-day sales for last-minute buyers, hoping to make it the biggest day of the season.

Which figure's arrival traditionally ends the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, opening the Christmas shopping season?

Santa Claus's float closes the parade, as it did at the first one in 1924, when costumed store employees marched with animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo.

Which supermarket giant grew from the East London stall where Jack Cohen sold surplus groceries in 1919?

Tesco got its name in 1924 from tea supplier T. E. Stockwell's initials plus the first two letters of Cohen, who had stocked his Hackney stall using his £30 demob money.

Sainsbury's began in 1869 as a dairy shop on which street in London's theatreland?

Drury Lane's No. 173 was where newlyweds John James and Mary Ann Sainsbury opened their small dairy in 1869; by his death in 1928 the family firm had well over a hundred shops.

Marks & Spencer began in 1884 as a market stall in which Yorkshire city?

Leeds was the start: in its Kirkgate Market, Michael Marks, a recent immigrant with little English, ran a stall under the slogan 'Don't ask the price, it's a penny'; Thomas Spencer bought a half-share in 1894.

In 1980, M&S became the first British supermarket chain to sell what?

M&S began selling packaged sandwiches in 1980, kick-starting Britain's chilled lunchtime sandwich market; in 1998 it also became the first British retailer to post a pre-tax profit above £1 billion.

John Lewis is owned by a trust for its employees, who are known as what?

John Lewis staff are called Partners because the business is held in trust for them; Spedan Lewis set it up in 1929, convinced that staff with no stake in a shop had no reason to work well for it.

The name of French retailer Carrefour means what in French?

Crossroads is what 'carrefour' means: the first shop opened in 1960 beside a road junction in suburban Annecy, and three years later the firm launched its first giant hypermarket near Paris.

Karl and Theo Albrecht reportedly split their discount grocery empire in two after a row over selling what?

Cigarettes, the story goes: the brothers could not agree on stocking them, so they divided their 300 shops into a northern group under Theo and a southern one under Karl.

The 7-Eleven name, adopted in 1946, referred to what?

Its opening hours gave the name: by 1946 the stores traded from 7 am to 11 pm, long hours for the time, and the name stayed when they later began opening all night.

Before becoming 7-Eleven in 1946, the chain used which name, a pun on carrying purchases away?

Tote'm began with a totem pole: a store manager brought one back from Alaska in 1928 and stood it outside the shop, and it drew so much attention that the name was adopted for the stores.

Best Buy was founded in 1966 under what name?

Richard Schulze opened Sound of Music, an audio specialty shop in Minnesota, in 1966; after a 1981 tornado wrecked a store, a 'best buy' clearance sale inspired the 1983 rebrand.

Which tech-support brand did Best Buy take over in 2002?

Geek Squad, founded by Robert Stephens in 1994, joined Best Buy in 2002; until 2016 its agents made house calls in black-and-white Volkswagen Beetles nicknamed Geekmobiles.

Which grocery chain did Amazon buy in 2017 for $13.7 billion?

Whole Foods Market was sold to Amazon by its last remaining co-founder, John Mackey, in a deal completed on 28 August 2017; it had begun as a single natural-foods shop in Austin, Texas.

John Mackey's 1978 vegetarian food store, forerunner of Whole Foods, was called what?

SaferWay opened in Austin in 1978; evicted from their apartment for storing food there, Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy lived in the shop, then merged it with Clarksville Natural Grocery in 1980 to open the first Whole Foods.

Which chain began in 1955 when Cal Turner turned his Kentucky department store into one with nothing priced over a dollar?

Dollar General was Cal Turner's answer to the 'Dollar Days' sales he saw big department stores advertise, so he made his Springfield store a one-price shop; the family firm had begun in 1939 as a wholesaler.

TJX's flagship off-price chain trades in Europe under what name?

TJ Maxx trades as TK Maxx in the UK, Ireland and continental Europe; the name was changed at its 1994 British launch to avoid confusion with the discount chain TJ Hughes.

TJX, parent of TJ Maxx and Marshalls, also owns which off-price furniture and décor chain?

HomeGoods, launched by TJX in 1992, went the opposite way to most retailers in October 2023: it closed its online shop and now sells only in its stores.

Nordstrom, founded in Seattle in 1901, originally sold only what?

Shoes were the whole business for six decades: John W. Nordstrom sold a disputed gold-rush claim, opened the 1901 shop with his friend Carl Wallin, and the chain added clothing only in the 1960s.

James Cash Penney's first stores were part of which chain before he used his own name?

Penney opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902 as a partner in the Golden Rule chain of dry-goods stores; he incorporated under his own name in 1913.

Montgomery Ward, the mail-order pioneer that traded from 1872 to 2001, had what nickname?

'Monkey Wards' was shoppers' fond nickname for the chain, whose advertising copywriter Robert May created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939 as a Christmas promotional giveaway.

Neiman Marcus was founded in 1907 in which city?

Dallas gained the store because its founders took $25,000 cash for their sales-promotion firm in Georgia instead of stock in a young soft-drink company, then went home to open Neiman Marcus in 1907.

Which chain did Charles Lazarus build from the baby-furniture store he opened in Washington, DC, in 1948?

Toys 'R' Us took that name in 1957, when Lazarus, home from the war and selling cribs to baby-boom parents, turned the shop over to toys.

The dance-on piano at FAO Schwarz was made famous by which 1988 film?

'Big' put Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia on the giant keyboard for 'Heart and Soul' and 'Chopsticks'; the studio even had doubles standing by, dressed to match, in case the two actors couldn't manage the steps.

Hamleys, London's famous toy shop, was founded in 1760 under what name?

Noah's Ark was William Hamley's name for the toy shop he opened in High Holborn in 1760; its later Regent Street store survived being bombed five times in the Second World War.

Gap Inc. was founded in 1969 by which couple?

Donald and Doris Fisher opened the first Gap on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco in 1969 to make it easier to find jeans that fit: it sold only men's Levi's, records and tapes.

The name Uniqlo is a contraction of what?

Unique clothing was the intended abbreviation when the first Uniqlo opened in Hiroshima in 1984; the 'C' is said to have been misread as a 'Q' during a 1988 registration in Hong Kong, and the spelling stuck.

H&M began in 1947 as 'Hennes', a Swedish word meaning what?

'Hennes' is Swedish for 'hers', fitting a shop that sold only women's clothing when Erling Persson opened it in Västerås in 1947; menswear arrived in 1968, when the 'M' joined the name.

Which hunting retailer did Hennes buy in 1968, adding the 'M' to its name?

Mauritz Widforss was a hunting retailer that Hennes bought in 1968; the purchase brought menswear into the chain, which became Hennes & Mauritz.

Primark trades under what name in the Republic of Ireland?

Penneys is the original name: Arthur Ryan opened the first store on Dublin's Mary Street in 1969, and abroad the chain took the name of its in-house clothing label, Primark, after the American chain JCPenney objected.

Sephora takes its name from the biblical Zipporah, the wife of whom?

Moses's wife Zipporah, Séphora in French, gave the chain its name; Dominique Mandonnaud, who began with one perfume shop in Limoges, bought the brand in 1993 and let shoppers handle the testers themselves.

Which UK pharmacy chain did Walgreens fully acquire at the end of 2014?

Boots, which began as a herbalist's shop in Nottingham in 1849, was bought in two bites: Walgreens took 45% in 2012 and the rest on the last day of 2014, creating Walgreens Boots Alliance.

CVS was founded in 1963 as an abbreviation of what?

CVS stood for Consumer Value Stores when brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and Ralph Hoagland opened the first one in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1963, selling health and beauty products.

The 'Shack' in RadioShack, founded in Boston in 1921, originally meant what?

A ship's radio room: at sea the wireless set sat in a small wooden structure known as the radio shack, and the Deutschmann brothers took the name for a shop serving ships' radio officers and ham operators.

Which rival, said to have been inspired by a $40 Blockbuster late fee, helped push the chain into bankruptcy in 2010?

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has told of being charged $40 for returning 'Apollo 13' late; Blockbuster peaked at about 9,000 stores in 2004 and filed for bankruptcy six years later.

Which Barnes & Noble rival was liquidated in 2011 after filing for bankruptcy?

Borders, founded in Ann Arbor in 1971, filed for bankruptcy in February 2011 and closed its last stores that September after no buyer emerged.

New York's Strand Bookstore is known for what slogan?

The Strand's '18 Miles of Books' slogan refers to its shelving; Ben Bass opened it on Fourth Avenue's Book Row in 1927 and it moved to Broadway and 12th Street in 1957.

Powell's City of Books, said to be the world's largest independent bookstore, is in which city?

Powell's City of Books fills a whole block in Portland, Oregon's Pearl District, about 68,000 square feet; Walter Powell opened the original Portland store in 1971.

On Etsy, an item must be at least 20 years old to be listed under which label?

Vintage on Etsy means at least 20 years old, and the line moves every year: things made in 2005, the year Etsy itself was founded, now qualify.

Which Ottawa e-commerce platform grew out of Snowdevil, its founders' online snowboard store?

Shopify began when Tobias Lütke, selling snowboards online in 2004, disliked the shopping-cart software on the market and wrote his own; the founders soon saw that the software was the real business.

Zappos became famous for offering its newly hired staff a cash bonus to do what?

Quit the company: about a week into training, Zappos made each recruit 'The Offer' of pay plus a bonus to walk away, judging it cheaper to learn early who didn't want to stay; Amazon later copied it as Pay to Quit.

Which grocery delivery company, legally named Maplebear Inc., went public in September 2023?

Instacart still files as Maplebear Inc.; founder Apoorva Mehta, who grew up near Toronto hauling groceries home by bus in the cold, started it in San Francisco in 2012.

Temu's name was originally short for what slogan?

Team Up, Price Down is the slogan Temu's name condenses; PDD Holdings, owner of China's Pinduoduo, launched it in the US in September 2022 and was buying Super Bowl ads within five months.

Fast-fashion giant Shein moved its headquarters in 2022 to which country?

Shein, founded in Nanjing in 2008 as ZZKKO by Chris Xu, shifted its headquarters to Singapore in 2022, registering Roadget Business Pte there as its holding company.

Buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna was founded in 2005 in which country?

Sweden's Klarna began in Stockholm in 2005 as Kreditor; angel investor Jane Walerud heard the founders pitch, bought a tenth of the firm and found the programmers who built its system.

Which Canadian shopping centre was the world's largest mall from 1981 to 2004?

West Edmonton Mall lost the title in 2004 but kept its oddities: built by the Ghermezian family, its indoor lake once carried real submarines, beside a wave pool and an ice rink.

Which Dubai shopping centre contains Ski Dubai, the Middle East's first indoor ski resort?

Mall of the Emirates has housed Ski Dubai since 2005: five slopes kept near freezing whatever the desert heat outside, plus resident penguins that visitors can book to meet.

Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, planned in 1922, is often called the first shopping centre designed for customers arriving how?

By car: developer J.C. Nichols built the Plaza for motorists and styled it after Seville, complete with a copy of the Giralda tower; the scheme was at first dubbed 'Nichols' Folly'.

The Burlington Arcade, built in 1818, runs from Burlington Gardens to which London street?

Piccadilly is its southern end, with Burlington Gardens to the north; Lord George Cavendish had the arcade built on his side garden and staffed it with beadles drawn from his old regiment, the 10th Hussars.

Which ancient Roman complex is often called the world's oldest shopping mall?

Trajan's Market, built on several levels beside Trajan's Forum in the early second century, is often called the world's oldest shopping mall, though many scholars now think it held imperial offices as much as shops.

Khan el-Khalili is a famous bazaar in which city?

Cairo's Khan el-Khalili is named after the Mamluk emir Jaharkas al-Khalili, who in the 1380s built a khan, an inn for merchants, on the site of the Fatimid caliphs' tomb; the bazaar still carries his name.

Chatuchak, the world's largest weekend market, is in which city?

Bangkok's Chatuchak has more than 15,000 stalls on about 35 acres and draws some 200,000 visitors a weekend; it began in the 1940s at Sanam Luang and was moved north decades later.

La Boqueria market has its entrance on which famous Barcelona boulevard?

La Rambla is where La Boqueria's main entrance opens; meat stalls were first recorded by the old city gate here in 1217, though the market gained a permanent building only after work began in 1840.

Which London food market, at the southern end of London Bridge, traces its history back to 1014?

Borough Market rests its claim on the Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson, whose account of events in 1014 calls Southwark a great market town; the present buildings went up in the 1850s.

Portobello Road Market, famous for antiques, is in which London district?

Notting Hill's Portobello Road market began in the 19th century selling mainly food; the antiques that made it famous came later, and Saturday remains its main trading day.

The KaDeWe department store, opened in 1907, is in which city?

Berlin's KaDeWe, short for Kaufhaus des Westens, opened in 1907; a crippled British bomber crashed into it during a wartime air raid, yet the store rose again and is famous for its sixth-floor food hall.

During the Soviet era, who was the sole vendor in Moscow's GUM store?

The state itself ran the store, whose initials stood for State Department Store; Stalin turned the building over to offices, and it reopened to shoppers only in 1953, months after his death.

Mitsukoshi, founded in 1673 as Echigo-ya, originally sold what?

Mitsui Takatoshi opened Echigo-ya in Edo in 1673 to sell kimono fabric; in 1683 it pioneered fixed-price cash sales in the shop instead of door-to-door selling on credit.

David Jones, billed as the world's oldest department store still trading under its original name, is in which country?

Australia's David Jones opened in Sydney in 1838; its Welsh-born founder retired in 1856, saw the firm fail a few years later, and came back to run it until every creditor was paid.

London department store Liberty is most famous for what?

Floral print fabrics made Liberty's name; Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened on Regent Street in 1875 with a £2,000 loan from his future father-in-law and repaid it within eighteen months.

Fortnum & Mason, established in London in 1707, was founded as what type of shop?

A grocery store is how it began in 1707: William Fortnum, a footman to Queen Anne who sold off the palace's half-used candles, went into business with his landlord, Hugh Mason.

A 'loss leader' is a product priced low to do what?

A loss leader is sold at or below cost to draw customers in to buy other goods; supermarkets' cheap milk or a holiday-season games console are classic examples.

In retail, what is a planogram?

A planogram is a diagram of shelf product placement showing where each item sits on the fixtures; chains use it to standardise displays and measure sales per shelf.

Prices like $19.99, also called charm prices, are an example of what kind of pricing?

Charm prices ending in 9 are psychological pricing: shoppers read $19.99 as nearer nineteen than twenty dollars because they weigh the leftmost digit first, the 'left-digit effect'.

QR codes were invented in 1994 by Denso Wave to label what?

Automobile parts came first: Masahiro Hara's small team at Denso Wave built the code to track components through car plants, and the company chose not to enforce its patent, which let QR codes spread everywhere.

Which supermarket loyalty scheme launched in 1995, the year its chain overtook Sainsbury's as Britain's biggest grocer?

Clubcard launched in February 1995, with analysts dunnhumby mining the shopping data for marketing chief Terry Leahy; within the year the chain behind it had passed its old rival to become Britain's biggest supermarket.

The US purchase plan 'layaway' is known Down Under by what name?

Lay-by is the term Down Under and in South Africa; the American version spread during the Great Depression and came to look like a relic once credit cards were everywhere.

Which company created Small Business Saturday in 2010?

American Express launched Small Business Saturday on 27 November 2010 to push holiday spending to local merchants; it falls between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Buy Nothing Day, a protest against consumerism, is promoted by which magazine?

Adbusters, the Vancouver anti-consumerist magazine, took up the idea Canadian artist Ted Dave launched in 1992 and promoted it worldwide; in North America it falls on Black Friday.

What is the term for someone hired to pose as an ordinary customer and report on a store's service?

A mystery shopper need not be a professional: British trading standards officers send teenage volunteers into shops as mystery shoppers to catch traders who sell age-restricted goods to children.

The world's first duty-free shop opened in 1947 at which airport?

Brendan O'Regan opened the world's first duty-free shop at Shannon Airport in County Clare in 1947, serving transatlantic passengers on refuelling stops, after the Irish parliament passed the Customs-Free Airport Act that year.

Hero of Alexandria's coin-operated machine, often called the first vending machine, dispensed what?

Holy water flowed for temple visitors when a coin dropped onto a lever inside and its weight opened a valve; Hero described the device in Roman Egypt some two thousand years ago.

Joy Mangano's first hit invention, pitched on QVC in the early 1990s, was what?

Mangano invented the self-wringing Miracle Mop in 1990 and sold 18,000 in one QVC appearance in 1992 after insisting on pitching it herself; the 2015 film 'Joy' dramatised the story.

Charity-shop chain Oxfam began in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for what?

Famine Relief was the aim: the Oxford committee formed in 1942 to get food through the Allied blockade to starving, occupied Greece; the charity shops that fund its work came later.

In pawnbroking, what are the items left as collateral called?

Pledges are the goods a pawnbroker holds as security for a loan; legend traces the trade's sign of three golden balls to the crest of Florence's Medici bankers, which other lenders copied.

A flea market is also known in the US by what name?

Swap meet is the usual American alternative; 'flea market' itself translates the French marché aux puces, presumably because the second-hand goods on sale might be flea-ridden.

Which London auction house began in 1744 when bookseller Samuel Baker sold off a baronet's library?

Sotheby's first sale was Sir John Stanley's library, and for more than a century the firm handled the great library sales, among them the books Napoleon took to St Helena; its name came from Baker's nephew John Sotheby.

Paul McCartney is among the few people allowed to make which sound, banned as a pickpockets' signal, in London's Burlington Arcade?

Whistling is said to have been banned because pickpockets whistled to warn each other when a beadle came near; the uniformed beadles still enforce the rule, though McCartney is among a handful let off.

Bernard Arnault took control of which luxury group in 1989?

Arnault became chairman and chief executive of LVMH in 1989 after a takeover battle, then bought dozens of houses from Bulgari to Loro Piana; he had studied engineering at École Polytechnique.

Liberty's mock-Tudor London store, finished in 1924, was built from the timbers of what?

Two Royal Navy warships, HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan, supplied the oak: their decks became the shop's floors, and the Great Marlborough Street frontage runs the length of the Hindustan.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy's oldest shopping arcade still in use, is a landmark of which city?

Milan's Galleria, designed by Giuseppe Mengoni, links the Duomo to La Scala; by tradition visitors spin a heel three times on the mosaic bull in its floor for luck, wearing a hole the city has had to repair.

The word 'mall' comes from London's tree-lined Mall, first laid out as an alley for playing pall-mall, which was what?

A game like croquet: players used a mallet to drive a boxwood ball down an alley and through a raised iron ring. Once the craze faded, the Mall became a fashionable promenade, the sense that shopping malls borrowed.

Supercenter chain Meijer was founded in 1934 in which state?

Dutch-born barber Hendrik Meijer opened his first grocery in Greenville, Michigan, in 1934; with its Thrifty Acres store of 1962, his chain pioneered the one-stop supercenter decades before Walmart's first.

Publix, the Florida supermarket chain founded in 1930, is owned mainly by whom?

Present and past employees hold most of Publix's shares, making it the largest employee-owned company in the US; founder George Jenkins managed a Piggly Wiggly store before quitting in 1930 to open his own.

What do the letters in the name of Texas grocery chain H-E-B stand for?

Howard E. Butt took over the grocery his mother Florence had opened in Kerrville in 1905 with a $60 loan, and the chain he built from it carries his initials.

Bernard Kroger founded the supermarket chain that bears his name in 1883 in which city?

Cincinnati is where Barney Kroger put his $372 life savings into a first shop in 1883; in 1901 he began baking his own bread to undercut the bakeries other grocers bought from.

The first two Home Depot stores opened in 1979 in the suburbs of which US city?

Atlanta's suburbs got the first two stores on 22 June 1979, each a cavernous 60,000 square feet; founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank had both been fired from the Handy Dan hardware chain the year before.

Why did Lidl's founder pay a retired teacher for the right to use the name 'Lidl'?

His surname suggested 'black market': Dieter Schwarz could not legally keep the Lidl name his father's firm carried and balked at 'Schwarz-Markt', so he paid Ludwig Lidl, found through a newspaper article, 1,000 marks.

E-commerce firm Mercado Libre was founded in 1999 in which city?

Buenos Aires native Marcos Galperin won his first investor while at Stanford by driving a visiting private-equity boss to his plane and pitching the idea on the way; Mercado Libre launched in August 1999.