Skaggs family


The Skaggs Family, starting from a small frontier town in southern Idaho, came to have an important impact on merchandising across much of the United States. During most of the 20th century, the Skaggs name was prominent on hundreds of stores throughout the West and Midwest.
The origins of a wide range of these grocery and drug store enterprises can be traced to this one Skaggs family. The father in the family was a Baptist minister and had moved west for a better climate. He had a large family; to supplement his income he opened a grocery store. He and six of his sons, with varying degrees of collaboration, introduced in the early 20th century two important changes in merchandising: the low-margin, cash-and-carry approach to business, and rapidly growing a multitude of common outlets, now called chain stores. Their entrepreneurial interests became a major retailing force resulting in large, retail chains that carried not only the Skaggs name itself, but names like Safeway, Osco, PayLess, Albertsons, Longs Drug Stores, Katz and others.

Biography

Circa 1887 Samuel M. Skaggs, with his wife Nancy and two of his brothers and their families, moved from Tennessee to Missouri. There Sam tried farming, managed a store and post office in Cato, Missouri. Between 1888 and 1900 he entered the Baptist Ministry and by 1900 settled in Newton County, Missouri. At the time of their move from Tennessee, Sam and Nancy had five children; in Missouri they had 10 more. Of the first 11 children, 9 were alive in 1900.
Of these there were six sons who came to be known by their initials:
Between 1908 and 1910, Samuel Skaggs brought his family from Missouri to Idaho. As a minister of a small group in a small frontier town, American Falls, Idaho, he needed additional support for his large family. He opened a small grocery store, but to compete with the few that were already operating, he changed its business model from one of credit accounts, which were tailored to the sporadic and seasonal income of farmers, to a cash-only basis. Attracting customers to this simpler arrangement would make sense if he could sell for much less than his competitors. While the margin would be lower, he avoided the risk of non-payment of accounts. To drive down the wholesale price of the groceries he sold, he bought them in larger lots than competitors. In those days large lots were defined by some fraction of a railroad carload, and because American Falls was a stop on the Union Pacific Railroad, this afforded Sam Skaggs an opportunity to buy and sell for less. Perhaps more important to his expansion-oriented sons than to Sam, the savings of large-lot buying increased as more stores came on line.
To portray the evolution and impact of the merchandising practiced by Skaggs and to track the creation of stores and their ownership transfers, a nearly 100-year chronology is used. In it lies the genesis of much of the modern merchandising. The Skaggs family anticipated what customers wanted, so the Skaggs brothers and their merchandising model comprise a thread in the fabric of the present commercial world. This chronology begins with Sam Skaggs moving his growing family west:

Timeline of events in the history of the Skaggs family


The Skaggs sons were frugal men and wanted to give their customers that same opportunity for frugality through low margins, compensated from a business perspective through wide replication of retail outlets. In the spirit of their minister father or grandfather, they have shared and are still sharing their good fortune through a number of foundations.
Their ALSAM Foundation has given hundreds of millions of dollars to education and health research in the form of scholarships, the establishment or funding of a number of university and research centers, and probably the nation's largest single parochial elementary and secondary complex, located in Draper, Utah. Called the Skaggs Catholic Center, which contains Juan Diego Catholic High School, St. John the Baptist Middle School, St. John the Baptist Elementary School and Guardian Angel Daycare. All four of these facilities are on the same Skaggs Catholic Center. Other notable gifts from the ALSAM Foundation include $100 million for the creation of The Skaggs Center for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute—one of the largest gifts ever made to medical research.
Skaggs Community Health Center in Branson, Missouri was named after M.B. and Estella Skaggs. M.B. was a Missouri native who owned a home and game preserve in eastern Taney County.