History:

Back in the 19th century, before large-scale retailing was born, people usually bought all their daily items at the grocery store near where they worked or lived. The daily necessities are packed in barrels, cloth bags or wooden boxes and shipped to the grocery store in bulk, but how to sell them to consumers in pieces is a headache. People can only go shopping with baskets or homemade linen bags. At that time, the raw materials for paper making were still jute fibers and old linen heads, which were poor in quality and scarce in quantity, and could not even meet the needs of newspaper printing. Around 1844, the German Friedrich Kohler invented wood pulp papermaking, which greatly promoted the development of the paper industry, and indirectly gave birth to the first commercial paper bag in history. In 1852, the American botanist Francis Waller invented the first paper bag making machine, which was then promoted to France, Britain and other European countries. Later, the birth of plywood paper bags and the progress of paper bag stitching technology made the cotton bags used in the past for mass cargo transportation were also replaced by paper bags.
When it comes to the first shopping kraft paper bag, it was born in 1908 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Walter Duvina, a local grocery store owner, started looking for ways to get customers to buy more things at once in order to boost sales. Duverne thought it would be a pre-made bag that was cheap and easy to use and could hold at least 75 pounds or so. After repeated tests, he locked the texture of the bag on the kraft paper, because it uses conifers with longer wood fibers to make pulp, and is treated by the chemical agents of caustic soda and alkali sulfide during the cooking process, so that the original strength of the wood fiber is less damaged, and the final paper is made of tight connections between the fibers, and the paper is tough. Can withstand greater tension and pressure without breaking. Four years later, the first kraft paper bag for shopping was born. It is rectangular at the bottom and has a larger volume than the traditional V-shaped bottom paper bag. A rope runs through its bottom and sides to increase its load-bearing capacity, and two pull rings are formed on the upper end of the paper bag for people to pick up. Duverne named the shopping bag after himself and patented it in 1915. By this time, the annual sales of such shopping bags had exceeded 1 million.

Prospect：

Prospect: The appearance of kraft paper bags has changed the traditional thinking that people’s shopping can only be limited by the number of items that their hands can carry, and also makes consumers no longer reduce the pleasant experience of shopping itself because they are worried about not being able to take it. If the birth of the kraft paper bag promoted the development of the entire retail industry, it may be an exaggeration, but it at least revealed to the merchants such a phenomenon, that is, until the customer’s shopping experience becomes as comfortable, easy and convenient as possible, you simply can not predict how much consumers will buy. It is also this point that caused the attention of later comers to the consumer shopping experience, and also promoted the development of supermarket shopping baskets and shopping carts.
In the more than half a century since then, the development of kraft paper shopping bags can be described as a smooth wind, the improvement of the material to enhance its load-bearing capacity, the appearance has become more and more beautiful, manufacturers will be a variety of trademarks, patterns printed on kraft paper bags, into the streets of the shops among the shops. Until the mid-20th century, the emergence of plastic shopping bags became another large revolution in the history of shopping bags. It has the advantages of being thinner, stronger and cheaper to manufacture, which has eclipsed the once-popular kraft paper bag. Since then, plastic bags have become the first choice for living consumption, and cowhide bags have gradually “retreated to the second line.” Finally, the fading scenery of the kraft paper bag can only be used in the name of “nostalgia”, “natural”, “environmental protection” in a small number of skin care products, clothing and books, audio and video products packaging.
However, with the global prevalence of “anti-plastic” wind, environmentalists have begun to look at the ancient kraft paper bag. Since 2006, McDonald’s China has gradually introduced a kraft paper bag with thermal insulation properties to hold takeaway food in all its stores, replacing the use of plastic food bags. This move has also received a positive response from other businesses, such as Nike, Adidas and other original plastic bag consumers, have begun to use high-quality kraft paper bags to replace plastic shopping bags.