Marion Barton Skaggs, nicknamed M. B. was an American businessman, grocer.
Background
He was born on April 5, 1888 in Aurora, Missouri, United States, the son of Samuel M. Skaggs, a Baptist minister and grocer, and Nance E. Long. Samuel moved his large family, numbering twelve children, to nearby Kato, Missouri, when Marion, the fourth child, was very young. At Kato, in the Ozarks region of southwestern Missouri, Samuel opened a grocery store. In a 1926 interview in American Magazine, Marion explained that he "got his first smell of groceries" in that store, and "loved it. "
After a short stay in Kato, the elder Skaggs was ordained as a Baptist minister, and then relocated his family to Newtonia, Missouri, where he took up his first position as a Baptist minister for an annual salary of $600. The Skaggs family supplemented this ministerial salary with subsistence farming on twenty acres. Marion helped on the farm, and he also trapped and sold rabbits. Looking back at his childhood, Marion claimed that his singlemindedness contributed to his later success as a grocer: "But whether I studied, or hoed, or trapped, I thought of groceries. Father wanted me to be a minister, but I had other plans. "
Skaggs gained his first practical grocery experience at age fourteen, when he spent his summer vacation working in a store at Granby, Missouri, about five miles from Newtonia. Here Skaggs learned about the precarious financial plight small grocers faced when they extended credit to their customers. "Right there, I decided that my store, if I ever got one, would do a cash business only. "
The Skaggs credo was: "He who serves best, profits most. "
Education
Marion ended his formal education with graduation from high school.
Career
After high school he entered into his first business venture at the age of nineteen, when he became partners with Oscar Skaggs, his eldest brother, in a restaurant, confectionery, and meat market in Diamond, Missouri.
In 1907 Samuel moved his family to Anadarko, Oklahoma, where he took another position as a Baptist minister. Marion and Oscar Skaggs sold their business in Diamond to join the family in Oklahoma, where they became partners with their father in another grocery store. Later, Marion recollected his six years in Oklahoma as the only stagnant period in his career: "I'm sorry to say, not a single important, progressive idea about selling groceries or increasing trade percolated through my mind. I was in a rut. "
When Samuel Skaggs's health began to decline, he moved his family to the high desert country around American Falls, Idaho, where he took up a homestead and founded another grocery store. Marion soon sold his business in Oklahoma, moved to Idaho, and himself became a homesteader. To make ends meet, he started a well-drilling business with a brother-in-law. Marion's singlemindedness still prevailed: "My only object in drilling wells was to get enough money ahead to buy a grocery store. As I worked, I could look out across the sagebrush and the dust and desolation, and see my model store. "
On August 15, 1915, Marion bought his father's tiny (eighteen by thirty-two feet) grocery store for $1, 088. By 1926, Marion Skaggs owned 428 stores in ten western states.
In 1926 he got together with the New York investment house Merrill Lynch to broker a merger with Safeway, a southern California grocery chain with 322 stores. Originally known as Sam Seelig stores, the chain had adopted the "Safeway" name in 1925. By 1927, the revitalized Safeway chain run by Skaggs operated 915 stores, which earned $1. 9 million in profits on sales of $69 million. In 1931, Safeway Stores, Inc. , owned 3, 527 stores, the largest number of stores in its history. Though the number of stores in the chain declined steadily during the depression era - a situation common to chain grocery stores of this period - both store size and chainwide sales increased. In 1937, Safeway Stores had sales of over $380 million and profits of more than $3 million.
Skaggs led an intensely private life following an interview he gave to American Magazine in 1926. The interview resulted in a flood of 8, 000 letters, one of which threatened to murder Skaggs and his family and bomb Safeway Stores unless a ransom of $10, 000 was paid. The extortionists were apprehended, and no harm came to Skaggs and his family, but thereafter he kept his personal life out of the public eye. While Skaggs encouraged his executives to join civic organizations, he did not join these organizations himself, and he avoided public speaking and public appearances.
On June 6, 1941, Skaggs resigned as the chairman of Safeway Stores, Inc. , in order to give his full time to personal and philanthropic affairs. Skaggs owned a game preserve in the Ozarks. Wild deer, elk, and buffalo roamed within twenty-nine miles of fence. He worked with the Missouri Conservation Commission to release into the wild 100 deer annually. Skaggs spent his retirement in Piedmont, an exclusive community in the San Francisco Bay Area. He died in 1976.
Achievements
As one of the pioneers of retail grocery chains, Marion Barton Skaggs dramatically changed the ritual of grocery shopping. The volume buying and large grocery outlets pioneered by Skaggs gave American consumers cheaper prices and more convenient shopping. He was one of the owners of Safeway Stores, Inc. , was an early proponent of the self-service concept.
Skaggs donated more than $300, 000 to construct the Skaggs Community Hospital in Branson, Missouri.
Connections
On October 28, 1907, Marion married Estella Iona Roselle; they had at least three children.
