Work as a Fuller Brush Man

Work as a Fuller Brush Man

About four months after I quit my job at Fisher Body to have more time for my college classes, I began to run out of money. This was 1961 in Oakland, California. I decided to go to work for the Fuller Brush Company. Fuller Brush makes really good products, and I used some myself. But, I would not advise anyone to try and making a living selling Fuller Brushes.

After I answered an add in the newspaper the branch manager came to our apartment and gave me a pitch on what it was like to sell Fuller Brush products. He convinced me that for a college student, this was the perfect part time job. After a couple of afternoons on the street with him, I decided to give it a try.

As a new man I wasn’t assigned the best territory in Oakland. I had a small area of several blocks in Piedmont, which was an upper middle class neighborhood. Most of my territory was in East Oakland, a working class mixed black and white district. I also was assigned a small territory in Alameda.

As I was instructed, I would walk up to a doorway, and ring the bell. When the door was opened, I would step back and say, “Hi! I’m your Fuller Brush Man.” Stepping back, I would reach into my sample case and say, “I have a gift for you.” Then I would give the customer a handy brush that had many kitchen uses. (I used it myself for brushing silk hairs off of sweet corn, and have never found another brush that worked so well.)

“What would you like to order today?” I would ask acting as if I were confident that the customer would want to refill her kitchen supplies or toiletries.

In each neighborhood where I worked, there were different problems. In Piedmont, most of the well-kept upper middle-class houses were empty when I knocked on the door. I usually worked in the in afternoons when my classes at Oakland City College were finished. There were some regular Fuller Brush customers in Piedmont, but a number of the women who opened the door were no longer interested in saving money. I usually made only a half dozen sales a day when I worked Piedmont.

I remember at one Piedmont house a husband opened the door, a high school teacher. I let him know that I was in school and planning to go into teaching. We talked awhile about the teaching profession. He ended up telling me that if I wanted to spend all of my Saturday afternoons correcting papers teaching wasn’t a bad profession. I pictured myself at the table correcting papers and sipping a scotch and water. “I could do that,” I told myself. We had a nice conversation, but I didn’t make a sale.

One of the tricks that the branch manager taught me was to mark a chalk X on the sidewalk next to the houses that were empty. That way my next time around, I would know that I had not visited them. I also would draw a line at the last house that I stopped at before quitting for the day. That way I would know where to pick up on my next day. I was kind of self conscious about marking the sidewalk with chalk and always looked around to make sure no one was watching.

In East Oakland usually someone was at home. Potential customers black and white were usually very friendly and would invite me inside and listen to my pitch. I remember one aging white guy who learned that I was attending college and actually cried as he told me that I reminded him of himself when he was young. “I was just like you. Full of ambition and working hard to better myself,” he told me. He ordered a new shaving brush, shaving lotion, and some cleaning products.

At another house a little black girl opened to my knock. “Hi! I’m the Fuller Brush Man. Is your mother at home?” I asked her.

“Yea,” she answered and opened the bathroom door where he mother sat on the toilet with and pants and underpants down below her ankles. Needless to say I did not make a sale at her house.

There were a number of old time customers in East Oakland and they usually had several products in mind that they wanted to refill. Most of the orders were under ten dollars. A good day in East Oakland might net me ten or twelve orders.

I pitched one customer right outside next to his pick up truck. I could tell from his actions that he was just a little intoxicated. He told me that his wife was always buying stuff for herself and nothing for him. Now it was his turn. We leafed through my catalogue and found a number of shaving accessories, brushes, and lotions. His order was more than twenty dollars. I suspected at the time that he wouldn’t have the money to pay for the products. And, sure enough on delivery day he came to the door and told me he was sorry. He was broke this week, but maybe he’d have the money the next time I came around.

I would park my old black Volvo at my starting point, walk four or five blocks down one side of the block, then turn and start back toward my car walking the other side of the street. There were kids playing in the streets that would sometimes shout hello, but mostly just ignore me. There were no gangbangers on the street and I always felt perfectly safe. My only concern was to find someone at home and make a pitch.

Alameda was probably my best territory. The area I worked was made up of older middle class houses with a number of Fuller Brush customers. My first day working Alameda I sold over a hundred dollars worth the products. However, I found out a week or so later that I had run out of my own territory and sold most of the products in another man’s area. The branch manager called and informed me of my error. In order to make up for it he suggested that I work a full day taking orders for the guy who had the area.

Selling Fuller Brush products was the easy part of the job. The difficult part was delivering the product. My last week’s sales would arrive at my apartment on Thursday night. I would begin bagging them and by Saturday morning I would have a whole room full of brown paper bags filled with orders. I wrote the address on the front of the bag and loaded the bags in my car in the order that I would deliver them.

The problem was that as I tried to deliver the orders and collect payment as many as half the customers would not be home, or at least they would not open to my knock. As many as half the customers who were at home would cancel their orders. Some told me that their spouse had order the product without telling them and that they really didn’t need it at this time. Others would tell me that they had had unforeseen expenses and couldn’t afford the product right now. Most would tell me to stop back in a couple weeks. Those who asked me to stop back sometimes took the product at my second visit, but not always.

Late Saturday afternoon I would return home with half the bags still in my car and my potential week’s pay cut in half. I would keep the products and try to redeliver on the next Saturday, and then return those that I couldn’t use for new orders.

After three or four weeks on the job I found that the real problem was that my territory was too small. As I adjusted to the process, I found that I could cover the whole territory in about two weeks. That put me back at a house that I had just visited a couple weeks ago. And, a potential customer would rightly say that they had just ordered from me. My branch manager assured me that once I made a certain number of sales the company would expand my territory. So, it was the old Catch Twenty-Two. To make more money I needed more territory, and to get more territory I need to make more money.

I only stayed with the Fuller Brush Company for about six weeks, and I seemed to earn less and less money with each progressive week. Today they sell Fuller Brush Products on the Internet. However I believe there are still some door-to -door Fuller Brush Men, but most of them are women.