Retail Details: How Flea Markets Got Their Name

Ever wonder how flea markets got their name? It’s an English translation of the French “marché aux puces,” a term that appears to have first been used in the 1860s. One theory is it may have been commonplace for furniture sold at outdoor French markets to be infested with fleas. There’s a distinct possibility that bargain hunters in France began to draw a connection between items purchased from outdoor vendors and flea bites, thus resulting in the development of a derogatory, if descriptive, term for the markets.

It is said that Grand Rapids-based men’s retailer, Meyer May, was the first to display garments on hangers. Curiously, the inventor of the modern coat hanger is a matter of some dispute. While some have argued President Thomas Jefferson thought up an early version, other historians have disputed this. What is clear is the wire coat hanger was developed sometime in the 1870s. The addition of cardboard tubing to the hanger started in the 1930s.

The notion of “set pricing” for retail goods, in which every customer pays the same price for a product, is only about 150 years old. It got its start with the Quakers, who felt that it was wrong to charge customers by their ability to haggle. In addition, some store owners realized it was easier to put a price tag on everything than it was to train clerks in the art of bargaining.

Nowadays, consumers expect to be able to buy fresh baked goods at their local supermarket. But in-store bakeries are actually fairly new and did not begin to appear in grocery stores until the 1960s.

Correction

The March 14 edition of Retail Details contained an error. The first mail order catalog in the United States was indeed published by Tiffany’s, but the print date was 1845, not 1945.