The Father of Retail: Clarence Saunders

If you search the internet for this name, you will probably get very little content about this great subject, and even less in Spanish. We all know the names of the creators of big companies like Facebook; but, apparently, there are not many people who know who invented a sector as important as retail. For this reason, today we want to talk to you about the man responsible for its creation: Clarence Saunders.

Clarance Saunders, el padre del retail

What was the purchasing process like before Retail?

Before we talk about how Saunders’ revolutionary idea was born, we want to mention how shopping worked before 1916.

More than a century ago, the customer had only the paper to pay. All the merchandise was behind the counter, the customer waited for his turn, ordered what he wanted to take, and the store manager had the task of taking, bagging, collecting, and delivering the order to the customer.

This purchasing process was tedious, both for the customer due to the long lines waiting to buy, and for the store manager, who had to do everything. Not to mention all the space that was lost in stores and warehouses.

Estanterías antiguas previo a la aparición del retail.

The birth of retail

Saunders, after working in several stores in which the aforementioned methodology was used, seeing these and other failures, devised the system that would completely change the concept of what a traditional convenience store was, decided that a store should divided into 3 areas:

  • The vestibule: the entrance of the store, where the cash registers would be located
  • The so-called “shopping area”: ​​Clarence made some plans in which it was observed that the customer, after going through a turnstile, would have to walk through aisles with shelves where the products are displayed and they themselves, choose what they were going to bring. Let’s say, he invented the first “self-service” store. In addition, the store offered baskets and boxes to allow and facilitate the transport of products throughout the establishment.
  • The warehouse, which is where the replacement products from the shelves were stored (it is still kept that way today).

And that’s how he carried out his first store, called Piggly Wiggly, which clearly caused a stir and criticism, nobody thought that the idea of ​​sellers only being at the cash registers, from time to time replenishing products in their locations and let the customer do the rest looking for what he wanted to buy on the shelves.

Primer modelo de retail de Piggly Wiggly

It turned out to be a success, soon sales increased significantly and the idea of ​​walking between the shelves ceased to seem like a strange idea, and became an incredible experience for the consumer. A year later, more than 1,000 Piggly Wiggly stores had been established across the United States.

And although the idea was mainly focused on the seller and saving costs in their salaries, since a single seller, in this new way, could make three times as much as before, Saunders with the implementation of the shelf as a sales system it significantly improved not only what he wanted to achieve about sellers, but also the shopping and customer service experience.

Retail, a timeless idea

Retail turned out to be one of the best ideas for what was known at the time as the buying-selling process. At present, this seems to us the most common thing that exists, and even technology has helped in all the advancement of the consumer experience.

This is how Saunders, with a project based on self-service and the implementation of shelves, changed the world of buying and selling and introduced us to retail as we know it now.

At Promargon we care about offering you the best options for retail, we invite you to visit our portfolio of accessories and shelves to assemble the retail to suit you.