He was born in December 1881 in Amherst County, Virginia, United States, to parents whose Christian names are unknown. His father, from a once-rich family of antebellum plantation owners, was a tobacco farmer at the time of Saunders' birth. Saunders grew up in Clarksville, Tenn.
After four years of schooling (from age ten to age fourteen) he began to work.
He took a job as a $4-a-month grocery clerk. Later he worked briefly in the Alabama coke plants and in a Tennessee sawmill before returning to the grocery business. By 1900 he was earning $30 a month as a salesman for a Clarksville wholesaler.
He moved to Memphis, and in 1902 formed a grocery cooperative. By 1915 he was a successful wholesaler. Within a year Saunders had an idea and a name that were to revolutionize the grocery business. In mid-1916, Memphis shoppers were tantalized by a series of billboards bearing the words "Piggly Wiggly. " (Asked later about the strange name, Saunders replied, "It just came out of my noodle. ")
On Sept. 11, 1916, Saunders opened his first store at 79 Jefferson St. , calling it King Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly was the prototype of the modern supermarket, a radical departure from the standard market, where people queued up at counters to be served by a clerk. Customers entered through a turnstile, picked up a splitwood basket, and walked down a continuous aisle, selecting their groceries and paying for them before exiting at the checkout.
Saunders' advertising consisted of weekly full-page ads, written in his unique purple prose, to promote weekend specials that (unlike other stores') lasted all week. Piggly Wiggly played havoc with conventional grocery economics. Instead of doing $400-$500 a week in sales, at a cost of 12-17 percent, Piggly Wiggly stores grossed $7, 000 at a sales cost of only 3 percent. Shoppers liked the novelty and the low prices.
That first year Saunders opened nine stores; by 1922 there were 1, 200 in 29 states, and Piggly Wiggly Stores Inc. was worth $7 million. Only half the stores were owned by Saunders; the rest were operated on a franchise basis by independent grocers, who paid for the name and a package of services. Among the franchisees were big grocery chains that experimented with the self-service idea and later made the Piggly Wiggly outlets their own.
In 1923 his company was the target of a "bear" raid by Wall St. investors who sold short, gambling that the price of the stock would plummet. Saunders counteracted with a "corner, " buying large amounts of Piggly Wiggly stock in hopes of driving the price up, but he lost. His pink palace, still unfinished, was taken over by the city of Memphis and turned into a museum of natural history and industrial arts.
In 1929, Saunders started a new chain with the odd title of Clarence Saunders, Sole Owner of My Name (popularly known as Sole Owner). By 1929 the new chain was flourishing despite a court battle with the new Piggly Wiggly owners, but it died in 1930.
Almost immediately Saunders started another business that did well for a while but never became a chain. Always mechanically ingenious, Saunders started working on his second great invention - the automated store, which opened at Memphis in February 1937. He called it the Keedoozle ("Key Does All"). Customers shopped without touching the merchandise, which was displayed in glass-fronted cases, and selected by pushing a key into the correct slot. Each item tumbled onto a conveyor belt, traveling first to the checkout and then to a loading dock.
During the war Saunders designed and sold wooden toys. In August 1948, however, he returned to the grocery field with a new, improved Keedoozle. He sold twelve franchises; but the mechanics were still too complicated, and the idea died in 1949.
In 1953, however, the ever-hopeful Saunders unveiled his second automated store, the Foodelectric. But he died in Memphis a short time later.
Saunders' lasting contribution was to start the supermarket revolution that transformed the grocery industry, bringing lower prices, higher profits, and different packaging and physical appearance of the stores. The revolution also transferred the labor of shopping to customers, exposing them to various sales techniques designed to encourage impulse buying. He was the first, who developed the modern retail sales model of self service (Piggly Wiggly stores). Being a multimillionaire, later he became "the world's most unfortunate financier. " He lost - $10 million, and finally control over Piggly Wiggly. Saunders started a new chain with the odd title of Clarence Saunders, which became extremelly sucessful. Later he started another business with the use of his great invention - the automated store, called it the Keedoozle ("Key Does All").
He was a devout Methodist.
Saunders had a reputation for brilliance, contrariness, and eccentricity.
He had three children with his first wife Carolyn Walker. He divorced his first wife in 1928 and later married Patricia Bomberg, with whom he had one daughter.
