August 9, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, grabbing a basket while grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the idea was once groundbreaking. And that was far from the only thing that changed when Piggly Wiggly—the first modern American supermarket—opened over 100 years ago. Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence Saunders & the Founding of Piggly Wiggly: The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American stories scramming a basket.
While grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the
idea was once groundbreaking, and that was far from the
only thing that changed when Pigley Wiggley, the first modern
American supermarket, opened over one hundred years ago. On September sixth,
(00:31):
nineteen sixteen, hundreds of curious shoppers came out for the
opening of a new grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson
Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Memphis is only one hour practically due north. For weeks
they'd seen billboards and read newspaper ads about this grocery
store with the funny name that promised an entirely new
(00:53):
shopping experience, one that would, according to its owner, forever
change the retail grocery business. Greg Hangler sat down with
Mike Freeman. You're the location of that first Piggley Wiggily
in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence
Saunders and the Founding of Piggley Wiggily, The Rise and
Fall of a Memphis Maverick.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I took a job at a restaurant downtown Memphis that
happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson and that was
the first location of the Pigmy Wibley store. It was
an interesting fact though I became interested in that. My
employer wanted me to do some research because he was
curious as well. You know what happened in the building.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's such.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's important to know what Saunders did differently was in
the old days, if you went into a store to shop,
you couldn't just reach out and pick out.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Your own grocery.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You had the clerks do that for you. So you
had to wait for them to You tell the clark
what you wanted, then they would bring it to you.
And Saunders thought, well, this is really slow, this is
so inefficient. And all this tied in with brand advertised.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Before the turnament centtuy.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
He had all these brands we still recognized, Kellogg Cereal,
Van Camp, Pork and Beans. All these companies were selling
their products and stores and Saunders knew, well, you don't
need a clerk to tell you what cereal you like?
You like Kellogg Cereal, there it is, you get it yourself.
(02:24):
Most important thing to him is I could sell more
groceries less costs, I pay fewer people.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Saunders grew up from a family that was poor.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
In fact, there's one story that a neighbor bought Clar's
a pair of shoes, and then when Saunders had money
later in life, he who sent a check to that
family for a number of years because they helped him
out and then he really needed it. So he knew
what it was like to suffer. You're from living hardship,
(02:57):
and he carried out with him, you know. He that
probably motivated him as much as he sings to do something.
Saunders became a traveling salesman for wholesale company, so he
would call upon grocers and Saunders developed a reputation from
being a bit brash. He would go into a store
(03:18):
and he would tell the store owner says, you know,
you would sell more vegetables if you displayed them this
way is the way you had it, And some thought, well,
what does this guy? Though not everybody appreciated his advice,
but it shows that he was already thinking about, you know,
we'll try ways to do things have been better than
it before. There wasn't a man in Memphis who built
(03:41):
a chain of stores, mister Bauer's stores, and they were
small corner of grocery stores. But every Bowers store looked
exactly the same as the signs on the front and
the layout of the store where the grocer's were placed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So each Bowers store is identical.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And that was an innovation too. If you went from
one store to the other, you know exactly where to
find what you wanted to buy because everything was in
the same place, despite you know, in different locations. And Saunders, uh,
he absorbed these ideas. That's the principal chain store. Everything
is alike as much as it convened. So if you're
(04:24):
comfortable with what they do, then you'll shop at chain store,
no matter where that location was. So you could go
into a town where you unfamiliar to you and find
your favorite grocery, you know, whatever the business is, or
Starbucks that matter, they get exactly what you want. And
that's the whole principal chase or Bowers did that before Saunders,
(04:47):
so he clearly learned from Bowers how.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
To manage a chain store business.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
The one thing that Bowers did not do was arranged
things customs to take out themselves, so you still had
clerks and Saunders thought this was inefficient way of doing things,
and he was kind of sarcastic. He says, you know,
and a store is not very busy, the poor customer
(05:18):
can't get the attention of a clerk because they're busy,
goofed off of the back crew.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Happens, or they're so busy, like during Christmas season, you know,
everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they can't handle
the orders. The arrangement of the store the Bowers and
the older merchants had was as he walked up to
a counter, and once you had your clerk's attention, you
(05:43):
would rattle off what you wanted and then he would
go about the the rest of the store picking out
the items you wanted and bring them to the front,
and then you would transact business.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Then then off you go.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And Saunders thought, well, you know, they don't need a
clerk to tell them that Campbell's soup is good, or
you just put it on a shelf that can find
it themselves. He took this journey to Terra Hae, Indiana
to look at a store that he was told was
unique and designs differently, and he came back a bit disappointed.
(06:22):
It wasn't really anything special at all. And Saunders told
the story off and he said, on the way back,
he saw this mother pig at a farm, and he
saw all these piglets trying to feed off the mother pig,
and invited him with customers, trying to attract inching.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Of a clerk.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And then the idea that popped in his head. He
had the name Pigley Wingley just from seeing this pig. Okay,
that's the name. And then he went about designing, well,
how would we get to actually do this. We'd have
to practically rebuild the interior of a store to change itself.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Served Tigley Wiggley, you.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Know, that was his name, and uh it was a
very unusual name. I mean, I think it was perfect
for what he was trying to do because he's being different.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And then he would he.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Began writing advertisements where Pigley Wiggily became a character.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tickley Wiggley goes to town.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You know, Tigley Wiggley does this, uh, and so you
know that's how he built his uh forehand identity. He
made a story out of imaginary pig that went shopping.
I read part of one is Tigley Wiggily. Ain't that
a funny name? A fellow that got up that name
(07:40):
must have a screw loose somewhere. All this may be so,
but Piggy Wiggily knows its own business best, and his
business will be this to have no store coourse, gab
and smirked while folks are standing around ten deep weighted.
Every customer will be her own cart. So if she
(08:00):
wants to talk to a kid of tomatoes and kill
her time, all right, and well, the scenes likely this
would be a mighty loads and chat. Saunders addressed customer fears.
You know, it used to be if you went in
certain stores in the old days, and you know, the
(08:21):
clerk might put his thumb on the scale, so you'd
pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, or they'd
sell you food that was out of date.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And Saunders thought all that.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Was just just raw. It was just not good business,
and you could sell more groceries just by being honest.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
He was very proud of.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
He talked a lot about labeling prices on everything. So
if you walk in, you go to the can soup aisle,
you know exactly what the price of that soup is,
and It didn't.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Matter what store you're in one of his stores.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
They all things about the same and it didn't matter
who you were or whether the clerk knew you or not.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We got the same prize.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
When we come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the
story of Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggily. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(09:40):
stories and with author Mike Freeman telling the story of
Pigley Wiggly and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
He knew he was taking a less profit and he
probably had people in the grocery business said it wouldn't kept
making any money. You're not selling hid of you're not
making enough profit.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
But he was king of a volume. Yeah, and you
can open.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The more stores you open, the more volume you have.
You know, one of the benefits of self service is
you were you are selling more goods per day and
that helps eliminate the problem of spoiled food or expired
for and Saunders was aware of that, and he would
(10:25):
advertise to people say this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I'm gonna treat you fair.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I mean, now, you can't imagine going in the store
not having a label on it.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So this is thirty two cents or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Can't imagine it, but for you know, in the twentieth
century though, it was commonplate, and when once you label everything,
then no grocery store can hide. His competitors were thinking, oh,
you know, they'd have to do something different. You know,
he proved right there with that first year that he
had about eight or nine stores in Memphis and Bowers
(10:58):
at over forty and he outsold Bowers stores simply because
he made it easier for people to shop, and they
just start swarming into this to peggle wiggless. You know,
he's one of those rare individuals that has an idea
that work and that transformed part of our society. Oh.
(11:22):
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
Ford decided, well, why can't we put an engine in
this little carriage and then hook it up to some wheels,
and then we don't need a horse and bug anymore.
We have a car change the world. The Solidiers isn't
of that level of success, but I think he had
the same mind where he thought, well, let's do something
(11:43):
a little different here. You know, the old ways are yeah,
you can.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Do a little faster, a little bit better than that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And then that's what Pigle was grocery stores version of
a model T. That's interesting is the next year he
started franchise, and he actually filed for several patents, several
pats but he started selling the idea that well, uh,
(12:11):
you guys down at Arkansas and this is in you
can build a thigure with it. You know, there's towns
all over the South that were large enough to sport
a couple of grocery store. And then that proceeded very
rapidly selling franchises all over the place. You could argue
that the founder of Walmart did virtually the same thing.
He put a Walmart and medium sized towns. You know,
(12:34):
but town doesn't have a Walmart and is kind of
not a towent. But having a store like that in
your community, hiring the local folks to work in the
store probably.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Manage the store.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It built a loyalty for that brand for Walmart still exists.
It differentstwy Walden and Saunders, as Walten never lost his visits.
He held onto him where I think Saunders had a
lot of the same attitudes, same personality.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
In some way.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
He wanted to be that champion, but in the end
he didn't keep that business long enough. Right now, most
people don't know Saunder's in Saunders achieved a level of
celebrity and wealth that must people only dream of. He's
most famous for. The Pig Palace is a building. I
don't know how many square feeted well they've added on
(13:28):
to it, but a majority of that thirty six housand
square feet is what he built. It was to have
a swimming pool and have everything a rich person would walk.
Saunders tried to outsmart traders of Wall Street, and to
explain it simply, he didn't realize they wrote the rules
(13:48):
of trade. There was no governing agency overseeing financial trade
that we have now. It was whatever certain people called
Wall Street decided to do is what was done. They
made the rules among themselves. I have trouble sometimes describing
a short cell as just a stock maneuver where different
(14:15):
people in the financial business spread rumors at the companies
in trouble that stocks of what not worth what it's
listing at now, and Saunders thought that was horrible. I
think the Wiggily had overexpanded and there was a franchiser
or two that had gone back run and that was
all the trigger that these short sellers needed. And he
(14:36):
started this campaign is take the shares out of the
hands of these Wall Street thieves or wolves. And he
started a buying campaign in Memphis, you know, save Piggy
Wiggily from Memphis. Most people in Memphis, or you know,
any city outside of New York probably thought about Wall
Street the same speed, and it was sort of a
(14:57):
this kind of a villainous place. And he playing on that,
you know, don't let these thieves take our fingerly Wiggley
away frogles. So everyone invested in saunders scheme to buy
all the shares hold them.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
He pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Borrow, they have to pay.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And if he's buying all the shares, they have to
come to him. We repay what they owe him. I mean,
he was trying to trap them. And the Border directors
of the Stock Exchange in New York kept Saunders from
doing that.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
They let the traders off the hook.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
They could change the rules. See there's no government agency
overseeing stock trick. Whatever the Border directors thought was legal
was illegal, and especially if they had friends who got
caught up in the scheme we're begging, you know, don't
let us die out here.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
That's well, well, lest Saunders died.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
You know, they don't know him, they don't care about him.
He's out part of their social verdub or anything like
that at all. He's just some heal ability from Tennessee
who thought he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
They just.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
You know, interpreted rules to let him die. So he
had borrowed all that money. Instead of gaining what he
thought would be hundreds of millions of dollars, he had nothing,
you know, twelve. They has a lot of money today.
To lude imagine what it was like in nineteen twenty three.
What Saunders had done, and there were people that really
(16:29):
liked him because he was, you know, come very famous,
was that he had begged Memphians to pull together money
pay off this debt. Some things can get back to
normal operating under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
And and people did.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
They had rallies or save Pigmy Wingley from Memphis. That
was a cam maid. Now for Saunders, he was careful
to say save Pingmy Wingley from Memphis. And he had
a point there too. I mean, you know, there's a
lot of jobs of medshin Styut because of his store,
this business, and then he made the dumb mistake of
(17:09):
putting money into this what we now know is a
pig palace, which is an extravagant whole, it says, you know,
and people that invested in piguway, they must have been shocked.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Is what aren't the watering doing.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
We're taking time away from our business, spending our money.
Bail you out, and you're building this stupid house.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
You don't have time for that anymore. How did they
find out about it?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well, a workman had been injured and the newspaper published
a story. Ye holy cow, you know they couldn't believe it.
This is terrible mistake. He may then the costing well,
I mean he tried to get to make money and
he did, but I mean he's still famous for what
(17:55):
to be wiglet.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And he lost the oh here in the company six years.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I guess the story is markle In itself, who started
with one store. Six years later he had a thousand.
I mean, you know, he had some substantial chain. But
I mean he was successful. He did build something that
was and he he just didn't hold on to it.
(18:24):
I mean he would be Sam Walton today, or his
memory would be as big as Sam Walton if he
had just held out into Pigmy Wigley. Like Walton held
on to Walmart. The most fitting memorial to him is
the ordinary self service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in
nineteen sixty two. By the end of his life in
(18:45):
nineteen ninety two, Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company
in the world. In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America,
he credited the enormous success of his retail stores to
the principal of self service. His brief description of the
benefice that self service gave to him and his desire
(19:07):
to pass on the savings to his customers seemed to
be a near match to Saunder's own words two generations before.
During the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise
stores have become popular in nearly every country in Europeasia,
Latin America, and parts of Africa. In an odd way,
(19:29):
Clarence Saunder's prophetic slogan for Pigley Wiggly all over the
world that's come true.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And great job on the piece as always by Greg
Hengler and a special thanks to Mike Freeman who wrote
the book Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Piggy Wiggly
and What a Story, And that he started the idea
of pricing and transparency and volume so that we could
lower profits on each individual item but make up for
(19:55):
that with volume.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
And that is indeed what Sam Walton did.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
There's no doubt that Sam took a lot of the
ideas of Pigley Wiggily and scaled them through a much
larger operation. The story of Pigley Wiggily, the story of
Clarence Saunders. Here on our American Story
And we continue here with our American stories scramming a basket.
While grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the
idea was once groundbreaking, and that was far from the
only thing that changed when Pigley Wiggley, the first modern
American supermarket, opened over one hundred years ago. On September sixth,
(00:31):
nineteen sixteen, hundreds of curious shoppers came out for the
opening of a new grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson
Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Memphis is only one hour practically due north. For weeks
they'd seen billboards and read newspaper ads about this grocery
store with the funny name that promised an entirely new
(00:53):
shopping experience, one that would, according to its owner, forever
change the retail grocery business. Greg Hangler sat down with
Mike Freeman. You're the location of that first Piggley Wiggily
in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence
Saunders and the Founding of Piggley Wiggily, The Rise and
Fall of a Memphis Maverick.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I took a job at a restaurant downtown Memphis that
happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson and that was
the first location of the Pigmy Wibley store. It was
an interesting fact though I became interested in that. My
employer wanted me to do some research because he was
curious as well. You know what happened in the building.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's such.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
It's important to know what Saunders did differently was in
the old days, if you went into a store to shop,
you couldn't just reach out and pick out.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Your own grocery.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You had the clerks do that for you. So you
had to wait for them to You tell the clark
what you wanted, then they would bring it to you.
And Saunders thought, well, this is really slow, this is
so inefficient. And all this tied in with brand advertised.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Before the turnament centtuy.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
He had all these brands we still recognized, Kellogg Cereal,
Van Camp, Pork and Beans. All these companies were selling
their products and stores and Saunders knew, well, you don't
need a clerk to tell you what cereal you like?
You like Kellogg Cereal, there it is, you get it yourself.
(02:24):
Most important thing to him is I could sell more
groceries less costs, I pay fewer people.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Saunders grew up from a family that was poor.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
In fact, there's one story that a neighbor bought Clar's
a pair of shoes, and then when Saunders had money
later in life, he who sent a check to that
family for a number of years because they helped him
out and then he really needed it. So he knew
what it was like to suffer. You're from living hardship,
(02:57):
and he carried out with him, you know. He that
probably motivated him as much as he sings to do something.
Saunders became a traveling salesman for wholesale company, so he
would call upon grocers and Saunders developed a reputation from
being a bit brash. He would go into a store
(03:18):
and he would tell the store owner says, you know,
you would sell more vegetables if you displayed them this
way is the way you had it, And some thought, well,
what does this guy? Though not everybody appreciated his advice,
but it shows that he was already thinking about, you know,
we'll try ways to do things have been better than
it before. There wasn't a man in Memphis who built
(03:41):
a chain of stores, mister Bauer's stores, and they were
small corner of grocery stores. But every Bowers store looked
exactly the same as the signs on the front and
the layout of the store where the grocer's were placed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So each Bowers store is identical.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And that was an innovation too. If you went from
one store to the other, you know exactly where to
find what you wanted to buy because everything was in
the same place, despite you know, in different locations. And Saunders, uh,
he absorbed these ideas. That's the principal chain store. Everything
is alike as much as it convened. So if you're
(04:24):
comfortable with what they do, then you'll shop at chain store,
no matter where that location was. So you could go
into a town where you unfamiliar to you and find
your favorite grocery, you know, whatever the business is, or
Starbucks that matter, they get exactly what you want. And
that's the whole principal chase or Bowers did that before Saunders,
(04:47):
so he clearly learned from Bowers how.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
To manage a chain store business.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
The one thing that Bowers did not do was arranged
things customs to take out themselves, so you still had
clerks and Saunders thought this was inefficient way of doing things,
and he was kind of sarcastic. He says, you know,
and a store is not very busy, the poor customer
(05:18):
can't get the attention of a clerk because they're busy,
goofed off of the back crew.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Happens, or they're so busy, like during Christmas season, you know,
everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they can't handle
the orders. The arrangement of the store the Bowers and
the older merchants had was as he walked up to
a counter, and once you had your clerk's attention, you
(05:43):
would rattle off what you wanted and then he would
go about the the rest of the store picking out
the items you wanted and bring them to the front,
and then you would transact business.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Then then off you go.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And Saunders thought, well, you know, they don't need a
clerk to tell them that Campbell's soup is good, or
you just put it on a shelf that can find
it themselves. He took this journey to Terra Hae, Indiana
to look at a store that he was told was
unique and designs differently, and he came back a bit disappointed.
(06:22):
It wasn't really anything special at all. And Saunders told
the story off and he said, on the way back,
he saw this mother pig at a farm, and he
saw all these piglets trying to feed off the mother pig,
and invited him with customers, trying to attract inching.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Of a clerk.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And then the idea that popped in his head. He
had the name Pigley Wingley just from seeing this pig. Okay,
that's the name. And then he went about designing, well,
how would we get to actually do this. We'd have
to practically rebuild the interior of a store to change itself.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Served Tigley Wiggley, you.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Know, that was his name, and uh it was a
very unusual name. I mean, I think it was perfect
for what he was trying to do because he's being different.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And then he would he.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Began writing advertisements where Pigley Wiggily became a character.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tickley Wiggley goes to town.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
You know, Tigley Wiggley does this, uh, and so you
know that's how he built his uh forehand identity. He
made a story out of imaginary pig that went shopping.
I read part of one is Tigley Wiggily. Ain't that
a funny name? A fellow that got up that name
(07:40):
must have a screw loose somewhere. All this may be so,
but Piggy Wiggily knows its own business best, and his
business will be this to have no store coourse, gab
and smirked while folks are standing around ten deep weighted.
Every customer will be her own cart. So if she
(08:00):
wants to talk to a kid of tomatoes and kill
her time, all right, and well, the scenes likely this
would be a mighty loads and chat. Saunders addressed customer fears.
You know, it used to be if you went in
certain stores in the old days, and you know, the
(08:21):
clerk might put his thumb on the scale, so you'd
pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, or they'd
sell you food that was out of date.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And Saunders thought all that.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Was just just raw. It was just not good business,
and you could sell more groceries just by being honest.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
He was very proud of.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
He talked a lot about labeling prices on everything. So
if you walk in, you go to the can soup aisle,
you know exactly what the price of that soup is,
and It didn't.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Matter what store you're in one of his stores.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
They all things about the same and it didn't matter
who you were or whether the clerk knew you or not.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We got the same prize.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
When we come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the
story of Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggily. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(09:40):
stories and with author Mike Freeman telling the story of
Pigley Wiggly and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
He knew he was taking a less profit and he
probably had people in the grocery business said it wouldn't kept
making any money. You're not selling hid of you're not
making enough profit.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
But he was king of a volume. Yeah, and you
can open.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The more stores you open, the more volume you have.
You know, one of the benefits of self service is
you were you are selling more goods per day and
that helps eliminate the problem of spoiled food or expired
for and Saunders was aware of that, and he would
(10:25):
advertise to people say this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I'm gonna treat you fair.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I mean, now, you can't imagine going in the store
not having a label on it.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So this is thirty two cents or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Can't imagine it, but for you know, in the twentieth
century though, it was commonplate, and when once you label everything,
then no grocery store can hide. His competitors were thinking, oh,
you know, they'd have to do something different. You know,
he proved right there with that first year that he
had about eight or nine stores in Memphis and Bowers
(10:58):
at over forty and he outsold Bowers stores simply because
he made it easier for people to shop, and they
just start swarming into this to peggle wiggless. You know,
he's one of those rare individuals that has an idea
that work and that transformed part of our society. Oh.
(11:22):
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
Ford decided, well, why can't we put an engine in
this little carriage and then hook it up to some wheels,
and then we don't need a horse and bug anymore.
We have a car change the world. The Solidiers isn't
of that level of success, but I think he had
the same mind where he thought, well, let's do something
(11:43):
a little different here. You know, the old ways are yeah,
you can.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Do a little faster, a little bit better than that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And then that's what Pigle was grocery stores version of
a model T. That's interesting is the next year he
started franchise, and he actually filed for several patents, several
pats but he started selling the idea that well, uh,
(12:11):
you guys down at Arkansas and this is in you
can build a thigure with it. You know, there's towns
all over the South that were large enough to sport
a couple of grocery store. And then that proceeded very
rapidly selling franchises all over the place. You could argue
that the founder of Walmart did virtually the same thing.
He put a Walmart and medium sized towns. You know,
(12:34):
but town doesn't have a Walmart and is kind of
not a towent. But having a store like that in
your community, hiring the local folks to work in the
store probably.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Manage the store.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It built a loyalty for that brand for Walmart still exists.
It differentstwy Walden and Saunders, as Walten never lost his visits.
He held onto him where I think Saunders had a
lot of the same attitudes, same personality.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
In some way.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
He wanted to be that champion, but in the end
he didn't keep that business long enough. Right now, most
people don't know Saunder's in Saunders achieved a level of
celebrity and wealth that must people only dream of. He's
most famous for. The Pig Palace is a building. I
don't know how many square feeted well they've added on
(13:28):
to it, but a majority of that thirty six housand
square feet is what he built. It was to have
a swimming pool and have everything a rich person would walk.
Saunders tried to outsmart traders of Wall Street, and to
explain it simply, he didn't realize they wrote the rules
(13:48):
of trade. There was no governing agency overseeing financial trade
that we have now. It was whatever certain people called
Wall Street decided to do is what was done. They
made the rules among themselves. I have trouble sometimes describing
a short cell as just a stock maneuver where different
(14:15):
people in the financial business spread rumors at the companies
in trouble that stocks of what not worth what it's
listing at now, and Saunders thought that was horrible. I
think the Wiggily had overexpanded and there was a franchiser
or two that had gone back run and that was
all the trigger that these short sellers needed. And he
(14:36):
started this campaign is take the shares out of the
hands of these Wall Street thieves or wolves. And he
started a buying campaign in Memphis, you know, save Piggy
Wiggily from Memphis. Most people in Memphis, or you know,
any city outside of New York probably thought about Wall
Street the same speed, and it was sort of a
(14:57):
this kind of a villainous place. And he playing on that,
you know, don't let these thieves take our fingerly Wiggley
away frogles. So everyone invested in saunders scheme to buy
all the shares hold them.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
He pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Borrow, they have to pay.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And if he's buying all the shares, they have to
come to him. We repay what they owe him. I mean,
he was trying to trap them. And the Border directors
of the Stock Exchange in New York kept Saunders from
doing that.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
They let the traders off the hook.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
They could change the rules. See there's no government agency
overseeing stock trick. Whatever the Border directors thought was legal
was illegal, and especially if they had friends who got
caught up in the scheme we're begging, you know, don't
let us die out here.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
That's well, well, lest Saunders died.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
You know, they don't know him, they don't care about him.
He's out part of their social verdub or anything like
that at all. He's just some heal ability from Tennessee
who thought he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
They just.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
You know, interpreted rules to let him die. So he
had borrowed all that money. Instead of gaining what he
thought would be hundreds of millions of dollars, he had nothing,
you know, twelve. They has a lot of money today.
To lude imagine what it was like in nineteen twenty three.
What Saunders had done, and there were people that really
(16:29):
liked him because he was, you know, come very famous,
was that he had begged Memphians to pull together money
pay off this debt. Some things can get back to
normal operating under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
And and people did.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
They had rallies or save Pigmy Wingley from Memphis. That
was a cam maid. Now for Saunders, he was careful
to say save Pingmy Wingley from Memphis. And he had
a point there too. I mean, you know, there's a
lot of jobs of medshin Styut because of his store,
this business, and then he made the dumb mistake of
(17:09):
putting money into this what we now know is a
pig palace, which is an extravagant whole, it says, you know,
and people that invested in piguway, they must have been shocked.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Is what aren't the watering doing.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
We're taking time away from our business, spending our money.
Bail you out, and you're building this stupid house.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
You don't have time for that anymore. How did they
find out about it?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well, a workman had been injured and the newspaper published
a story. Ye holy cow, you know they couldn't believe it.
This is terrible mistake. He may then the costing well,
I mean he tried to get to make money and
he did, but I mean he's still famous for what
(17:55):
to be wiglet.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And he lost the oh here in the company six years.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I guess the story is markle In itself, who started
with one store. Six years later he had a thousand.
I mean, you know, he had some substantial chain. But
I mean he was successful. He did build something that
was and he he just didn't hold on to it.
(18:24):
I mean he would be Sam Walton today, or his
memory would be as big as Sam Walton if he
had just held out into Pigmy Wigley. Like Walton held
on to Walmart. The most fitting memorial to him is
the ordinary self service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in
nineteen sixty two. By the end of his life in
(18:45):
nineteen ninety two, Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company
in the world. In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America,
he credited the enormous success of his retail stores to
the principal of self service. His brief description of the
benefice that self service gave to him and his desire
(19:07):
to pass on the savings to his customers seemed to
be a near match to Saunder's own words two generations before.
During the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise
stores have become popular in nearly every country in Europeasia,
Latin America, and parts of Africa. In an odd way,
(19:29):
Clarence Saunder's prophetic slogan for Pigley Wiggly all over the
world that's come true.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And great job on the piece as always by Greg
Hengler and a special thanks to Mike Freeman who wrote
the book Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Piggy Wiggly
and What a Story, And that he started the idea
of pricing and transparency and volume so that we could
lower profits on each individual item but make up for
(19:55):
that with volume.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
And that is indeed what Sam Walton did.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
There's no doubt that Sam took a lot of the
ideas of Pigley Wiggily and scaled them through a much
larger operation. The story of Pigley Wiggily, the story of
Clarence Saunders. Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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