Grocer Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly on September 11, 1916, in Memphis, Tennessee. The store was the first in Storie where customers could select their merchandise. Saunders’ new model significantly reduced costs by reducing clerks. Thus, by the end of 1916, there were already nine Piggly Wiggly establishments around Memphis.
Clarence Saunders always had a lot of innovative ideas. For example, he thought that stores should move the cash registers to the exit to avoid crowding at the entrance. For several years, Saunders dreamed of having his store where he could realize his vision. This is how Piggly Wiggly was born.
By the way, the water field has a funny name. Legend has it that Clarence Saunders was riding in a train car, looked out the window, and saw piglets trying to squeeze under a fence. This led to the creation of the cool memorable name.
Saunders designed his stores to direct customers along predetermined routes. All Piggly Wiggly’s used the same color scheme and fonts and were meticulously kept clean. Saunders created a new way of arranging merchandise. The main store was a sales floor divided into rows where various goods were placed.
A year after opening his first store, Saunders solidified his concept with a series of patents owned by the Piggly Wiggly Corporation. Although his model quickly became popular, he did not stay in a management position for long. Saunders later tried to introduce the concept – fully automated grocery stores Keedoozle and Foodelectric – but was unsuccessful.
The stores flourished, and by the fall of 1922, there were 1,200 of them. Of these, 650 were owned directly by Piggly Wiggly Stores and the rest were independently owned, paying royalties on the parent company’s profits for the right to use the patented method of trade. By the late 1930s, mechanization and automatic cash registers contributed to the growing popularity of self-service.
By 1936, the company had 2,660 stores nationwide and a profit of $180 million. And in 1937, a much-needed and recognizable part of any modern supermarket was invented – the wheeled cart.
Of course, the competition in the market has significantly increased over the years, and Piggly Wiggly had to close a lot of its shops. However, the company still successfully operates. Today the chain has a little more than 500 supermarkets across the country.
What is Piggly Wiggly?
Piggly Wiggly is the name of an American chain of supermarkets, established in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee. Today the chain has more than 500 locations in 18 states across the country. Piggly Wiggly is believed to be the world’s first self-service store.
In terms of visual identity, Piggly Wiggly has had several logo modifications throughout the years, and since the company has hundreds of locations across the USA, some of the stores are still using older versions of the brand’s badge.
The original Piggly Wiggly logo, introduced in 1916, was the only badge of the company, that did not contain any image of a cartoonish piggy. The badge was based on stylish uppercase lettering in a modern sans-serif typeface, written in two levels across a solid roundel in a delicate light frame.
In 1949 the Piggly Wiggly logo was redesigned for the first time. And this is when the funny hand-drawn image of a piggy in a paper hat appears on the badge. It was drawn on a circular medallion, with a thick frame where the name of the company was written in bold uppercase sans-serif characters.
Another version of the Piggly Wiggly logo was introduced in 1983, and this banner is still used by some of the chain’s locations. The image of a pig was placed in the left part of a solid-red horizontally oriented rectangular badge with rounded angles and a yellow outline. The name of the chain was written in two levels of a bold stylized sand-serif font, in lowercase.
The redesign of 2009 has created a modern version of the Piggly Wiggly logo. The piggy was placed on a roundel with a gold background and w thick red frame, above the narrow black banner where the white lowercase lettering in a simple sans-serif is set. There is a slight silverish shadow around the roundel, which adds some volume to the composition.
The modest lowercase lettering from the Piggly Wiggly logo, introduced in 2009, is set in a simple and smooth sans-serif typeface, which looks pretty close to such commercial fonts as FS Albertreg Paneuropean, Salda or Kyrialtrade Sans Pro, with some minor modifications.
As for the color palette of the Piggly Wiggly visual identity, it is quite wide: light pink, black, and white for the mascot, gold and red for the medallion, and laconic black and white for the lettering banner.