As early as the 19th century, when large-scale retailing had not yet been born, people usually purchased all daily items at grocery stores near their work or residence. Those daily necessities are packed in wooden barrels, cloth bags or wooden boxes. After being transported to grocery stores in bulk, how to sell them to consumers in pieces is a headache. People can only go shopping with baskets or homemade hessian bags. The papermaking raw materials at that time were still jute fiber and old linen cloth, which were of poor quality and scarce in quantity, and could not even meet the needs of newspaper printing. Around 1844, German Friedrich Kohler invented wood pulp papermaking technology, which greatly promoted the development of the papermaking industry and indirectly gave birth to the first commercial paper bag in history. In 1852, American botanist Francis Waller invented the first paper bag making machine, which was subsequently promoted to France, the United Kingdom and other European countries. Later, the birth of plywood paper bags and the advancement of paper bag sewing technology caused the cotton bags used in the past to transport bulk goods to be replaced by paper bags.
As for the first kraft paper bag for shopping, it was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA in 1908. In order to increase sales, Walter Duvina, a local grocery store owner, began to look for ways to allow consumers to buy more things at once. Duvina believes that it should be a prefabricated bag that is low-cost and easy to use, and can bear a minimum weight of about 75 pounds. After repeated experiments, he locked the texture of this bag on kraft paper, because it is pulped from coniferous trees with long wood fibers, and is treated with relatively mild caustic soda and sulfide chemicals during the cooking process, making it The original strength of the wood fibers is less damaged, so the final paper produced has tight connections between the fibers, and the paper is tough and can withstand large tensile forces and pressures without breaking. Four years later, the first kraft paper bag for shopping was born. It has a rectangular bottom and a larger volume than traditional V-shaped bottom paper bags. A rope runs through the bottom and both sides of the paper bag to increase its load-bearing capacity, and two pull rings are formed at the upper end of the paper bag to facilitate people's lifting. Duvina named this shopping bag after himself and applied for a patent in 1915. At this time, the annual sales volume of this shopping bag has exceeded 100 million.