The first European hypermarket is commonly mistaken to be the Carrefour store that opened in 1963, at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France, The co-founders were influenced by the teachings of Colombian-born American marketing executive Bernardo Trujillo, who taught executive education as part of the NCR Corporation's marketing campaign. However, the Belgian retailer Grand Bazar preceded Carrefour by two years when it opened three hypermarkets in a short span in 1961 under the name "SuperBazar" after Belgian law restricting the size of department stores was abolished in January 1961. The first "SuperBazar", opened in Bruges on 9 September 1961, initially designed to become a non-food department store, however only covered a surface area of , and was later converted into a regular supermarket. The substantially larger store that opened a week later in Auderghem near Brussels, covering , is regarded as a more proper hypermarket that brought the concept to fruition. It was Belgian market development engineer , who adopted the concept from his frequent trips to the United States, particularly inspired from the Grand Union's "Grand Way" center in Paramus, New Jersey.