Fuller's Fillies

With soft determination, a trig young saleswoman edged her way into the half-open front door of a prosperous Hartford, Conn. home. Minutes later, she had sold her first order of "Debutante" cosmetics which The Fuller Brush Co. is adding to its famed house-to-house business.

The Fullerette had been picked by a critical boss--the Fuller Brush man whose $30-million-a-year beat she hoped to build up. From him she had learned the whole bag of Fuller rules: 1) dress neatly; 2) speak quietly; 3) never high-pressure, and 4) take a brushoff with a smile.

Fighting Trim. Fuller's 7,300 dealers buy their stock; their profit (average take: $70 a week) depends on their own initiative. Fuller men have delivered babies, rushed stricken customers to hospitals; one saved a child from strangulation by slapping its bottom until the coin she had swallowed was coughed up. Unlike the Fuller Brush man hero in the current Red Skelton film, no Fuller dealer has ever been suspected of murder, and despite legend, his erotic adventures on the job are few, if any.

The original Fuller Brush man is kindly, dignified Arthur C. Fuller, 62, who parlayed a basement shop in Somerville, Mass. into a national institution. Fuller made his brushes by night, sold them by day. In 1906 he moved to Hartford, got a helper. When retail stores refused to handle his brushes, he got his first salesmen. He has taken a paternal interest in them ever since; all his district managers are former salesmen. When son Howard left college (Harvard and Duke), he peddled brushes for a year to learn the business.

New Boss. Howard Fuller, able salesman and yachtsman (his cutter Gesture won the Bermuda race two years ago), became president in 1943, when Arthur Fuller upped himself to chairman. The new president took over a business which had cut its normal civilian output drastically to make brushes for the cleaning of guns. To meet the demand he made the company tops in the field of brush-making machinery, developed new brushes for industrial uses. He also began to use girls to reinforce his war-depleted sales staff. The experiment was only partly successful; lugging a sample case with 36 different brushes was too much for most girls.

When Fuller took over the house-to-house agency for Daggett & Ramsdell, Inc.'s Debutante Cosmetics this year, he decided to give girls another try. If housewives take to Fullerettes and their cosmetics as they have to brush men, Fuller hopes to have 4,000 of them out by Christmas, add another several million dollars a year to his sales.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.