It is one of the biggest
employers in the world. It eats up a large chunk of
our money. It is the retail industry.
Retailing is a massive, passive beast that pervades
just about all our lives. Virtually all of us shop,
sometimes as a pleasure and sometimes as a burdenous
chore.
But when and how did it all begin? The answer is
probably to do with surpluses. As we got better at
cultivating the land, some people found that even
after feeding their families and animals and putting
food into storage, there was some left over. Rather
than waste this surplus, it was traded for other
surpluses or perhaps tools or other objects.
Those that had enough land and were particularly
good at producing food from it would have realized
that they were on to a good thing by deliberately
producing surpluses. Eventually the informal trade
in goods would have become more organized, with
central markets being formed where these producers
could get together on a regular basis in order to
exchange goods.
Of course, trading goods for other goods is all very
well until you have just about every thing you are
likely to ever need, or the product you want has yet
to be produced. In order to get around this, people
started to owe goods to other people. Early forms of
credit may have just been verbal agreements. As time
passed, some traders and producers decided to keep a
record of what was owed. One way this was done was
by the debtor leaving some collateral with the
creditor – some object or an animal that was held by
the creditor until the debt was paid. This was OK
until the debtor needed the tool or animal in order
to produce the very goods that were owed. An
alternative way of denoting credit was to use a
symbolic object, such as small animal. Since small
animals are not very portable, it became more normal
to use small inanimate objects such as pebbles. Over
time these small object became more decorated and
valued and eventually metal coins and paper notes
became more and more familiar. So early trading gave
rise to money.
As time passed, some producers would have found they
were better at selling the goods than growing them
(or perhaps enjoyed it more!). Others preferred to
stick to growing. So there was a gradual separation
of the producers and the traders.
And it was not just food that was sold. Tools,
trinkets, jewelry, cups, plates and many other
objects would have been traded as well.
The informal markets would, over time, become more
formal and more permanent. So shops began. Other
traders would prefer to travel around selling their
goods. These became known as peddlers. Selling from
a regular market, from a permanent shop or peddling
goods are known collectively as retailing.
