Judging from the window display, rice was a big seller at this Sole Owner store.
Dear Vance: Everyone knows that Clarence Saunders invented the first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, but I’ve come across ads and references to something called “Clarence Saunders: Sole Owner of My Name Stores.” What were those? — D.K., Memphis
Dear D.K.: Oh sure, he created the supermarket. But I don’t like talking about Clarence Saunders. His long-running feud with the Lauderdales has been well-documented, prompted by his childish jealousy over our fortune and social standing. Not to mention the success of our chain of sno-cone parlors. Then there was that petty matter of his so-called Pink Palace. Anyone driving by can see that it’s obviously a cheap, gaudy imitation of the Lauderdale Mansion, with specific instructions given to the architects to make the roofline three feet higher, just to top us. Literally.
But I’ll give the man his due. He was resourceful. When my family drained our bank accounts because of a series of ill-conceived investments, we stayed home and sulked. When Saunders lost his millions in a convoluted stock-market takeover that cost him his Piggly Wiggly chain, he simply started over and rebuilt his enterprise with different grocery stores.
The loss of Piggly Wiggly is so complicated that it almost defies explanation. In fact, here is how the Wall Street Journal summed it up: After explaining that speculators in 1923 had made a “run” on Saunders’ stocks, the WSJ wrote, “Reassured by the ‘bears,’ the New York Stock Exchange declared a ‘corner’ existed, and gave the ‘bears’ five days rather than 24 hours to deliver the stock Saunders had bought. The additional time meant a flood of stock poured [in] from distant points and gave the ‘shorts’ opportunity to deliver.”
Uh, what? If you can explain “shorts” and “bears” then I’m very happy for you. The main thing is, by 1924 Saunders no longer owned the grocery chain he founded. But did he no longer “own” his own name?
By 1927, he operated 220 stores in 15 states, with total sales approaching $25 million — an astonishing sum in those days.
Well, let me see if I can make sense of that for you. You have to understand, first of all, that Saunders employed very bizarre advertising, always putting his full name in the ads, and sometimes not even mentioning Piggly Wiggly at all. So when the Wall Street lawyers took away his nationwide chain of grocery stores, they also thought that his name came with the buy-out. My pal Mike Freeman, author of Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Piggly Wiggly, explains that the new owners of Piggly Wiggly knew Saunders would immediately start a new — and competing — grocery chain: “His name was inevitably linked in the public mind with self-service and Piggly Wiggly. How easy it would be for Clarence Saunders to promote his new business as the creator of Piggly Wiggly.”
Well, as it turns out, Saunders decided he didn’t need to mention his former stores. He just needed to remind people he was still Clarence Saunders.
And so it was that the new groceries were given the very unusual name of “Clarence Saunders: Sole Owner of My Name” and by June 1924, he had already opened four of them across town.
On North McLean, the top corners of an old building carry white stone shields inscribed "CSSO" — indicating this was once a Clarence Saunders Sole Owner grocery.
This was complicated for city directories of the day, I might point out, which simply listed the properties as “Clarence Saunders Stores.” The odd name stuck with shoppers, though, who knew them as “Sole Owner” stores, and that’s how he promoted them, in ads that he ran in newspapers, high-school yearbooks, and pretty much anywhere there was ink on paper.
The Lauderdale Archives is fortunate to hold several vintage photos of several early Sole Owner locations. As you can see here (right), the buildings weren’t especially fancy on the outside, with simple hand-painted signs in the windows, but they certainly spent a lot of time and trouble on their window displays, even if it was just boxes of Brillo pads or White House rice.
I wish I could tell you exactly where this particular store was located; you probably know how obsessive I am about such things. But without a street sign or an address visible, I can’t do much — especially since Saunders managed to unveil eight Sole Owner stores in his first year of operation. And, in kind of an “in your face” move, he built many of them just down the block from existing Piggly Wiggly stores — sometimes right across the street from them.
They were an immediate success. As Freeman recounts in his book, “The public supported Saunders’ comeback in the grocery trade. The Sole Owner stores grew as rapidly as he could find people to buy a franchise or manage a new store.” By 1927, he operated 220 stores in 15 states, with total sales approaching $25 million — an astonishing sum in those days.
There was just one problem. The timing was awful. The Great Depression was looming over every business venture in America, and Saunders wasn’t immune. Looking back, it’s clear that in these perilous times he over-extended his ventures. In 1931, he even formed a Pacific Division, with plans to build more than 100 Sole Owner stores in California, and had signed franchise agreements to open 25 others in Chicago. By the next year, he was clearly in financial trouble, and by 1933, the Sole Owner operation was suddenly bankrupt. The Memphis city directories, which at one time listed more than 20 Sole Owner stores here, now devoted only a few lines to the “Clarence Saunders Corporation,” with an office in the Sterick Building. By 1935, all of the Sole Owner stores were either standing empty, or had been taken over by other grocers, such as Kroger.
Some of these old building are still standing, if you know where to look, and if you know how to decipher clues in their design. On North McLean a red-brick building, now a residence, carries white stone shields at each corner (above), spelling out “CSSO.” This, of course, marks the property as a former “Clarence Saunders Sole Owner” store.
University of Memphis Special Collections
Clarence Saunders never got to live in the mansion he built on Central, later purchased by the city and converted into the Memphis Pink Palace Museum. Photo courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries.
As he had done before, Saunders didn’t seem to worry too much about his misfortunes. He tried again with his chain of automated Keedoozle stores, and even though that concept was limited by the technology of the day (the complicated mechanical system of wires and conveyor belts kept breaking down), I have a feeling Saunders would have made a go of it if a heart attack in 1953 didn’t finally put an end to his endeavors.
Now, there’s a side story to the Sole Owner saga that needs telling here. With all that money pouring in, in the early days at least, Saunders decided to invest in something rather unusual: his own personal, privately owned football team. Officially called the Clarence Saunders Sole Owners, most fans called them the Tigers, and this team had claws. Coached by Early Maxwell, an accomplished sports writer and public relations executive, often described simply as “the Memphis sports legend,” the team traveled the country. In a short span of just two years, they took on anybody and everybody, it seems, and managed to beat the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Yes, those Bears and those Packers.
Saunders’ Tigers would regularly hold matches in the old Hodges Field on Jefferson (now the site of Regional One), drawing sell-out crowds for the famous teams, but not so well when playing against the Hominy Indians from Oklahoma, the St. Louis Trojans, or — my favorite team name — the Nashville O. Geny Greenies. Even so, the newly formed National Football League took notice of his successes and flair for promotion, and in 1930 approached Saunders about joining the 10-year-old league.
He turned them down. He wasn’t really into football. Some people feel he had formed the team as a lark — a hobby, really — and the story goes that he didn’t want to travel to other cities to watch his own team. But this disturbing fact is true: At one point in our city’s history, the mighty NFL came to Memphis and asked us to join them. And we said, “Eh, no thanks. Not interested.” And we’ve been chasing that dream ever since.
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, 65 Union Avenue, Suite 200, Memphis, TN 38103
Online: memphismagazine.com/ask-vance
