Jewish Invention Myths: The Discount Store
Jews have a nasty habit of claiming that they created/invented things when they in fact didn’t and then never correcting the claim so that it becomes common place and ‘accepted as fact’. A good example of this is the claim that jews ‘invented’ the modern Discount Store.
Both Kathyrn Bernheimer at ‘Boulder Jewish News’ (1) and Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at the ‘Times of Israel’ (2) claim that jews created the modern Discount Store. They are no specific details behind this claim, so I am forced to assume that Bernheimer and Raskin-Zrihen are thinking of someone like Sol Price who launched discount superstore FedMart in 1954 and was jewish. (3)
The truth is that the first discount store was Woolworths which opened its doors for the first time in New York in 1879 and launched a genre of shop that was then called ‘five-and-dime stores’ or ‘variety stores’ where the goods/merchandise usually cost five or ten cents that were renamed ‘Discount Stores’ in the twentieth century. (4)
Essentially Woolworths was the first iteration of what we now call a ‘Dollar store’ and it was founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth, who was an American of decidedly English origin. (5)
Woolworth also inspired the next major chain of discount stores that followed in their wake which was Kmart since its founder Sebastian Spering Kresge of Allentown, Pennsylvania – Kmart was founded in 1897 as the S.S. Kresge Company and became Kmart in 1977 - met Woolworth when he was travelling salesman and was inspired by his idea and successfully ran with it.
So no jews didn’t invent the idea of the ‘Discount Store’ either.
References
(1) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(2) https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/when-is-a-jew-not-a-jew/
(3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403336_2.html
(4) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/19/woolworths-retail-department-stores
(5) Ibid.
(6) https://web.archive.org/web/20170922050604/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/12260040/kresge_stores_observe_golden_anniversary/