Fuller Brush Company

Fuller Brush Company

Type	Privately-held subsidiary (since 2007)
Founded	1906 (1906)
Founder(s)	Alfred Fuller
Products	Branded and private label products for personal care as well as commercial and household cleaning
Parent	Sara Lee (1968–1989); Privately-held (1989–1994); CPAC Inc. (since 1994)
Website	www.fullerbrush.com

The Fuller Brush Company sells branded and private label products for personal care as well as commercial and household cleaning; it is a subsidiary of CPAC Inc., which since 2007 has been owned by the private equity group Buckingham Capital Partners. Fuller Brush was founded in 1906, by Alfred Carl Fuller, and since 1968 it has been owned by CPAC.

History

Early years

Alfred C. Fuller began what was to become Fuller Brush Company in a basement shop in Somerville, Massachusetts; In 1906 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut and founded the company.

In 1931, the establishment of the first of what became known as the Green River Ordinance led Fuller Brush to challenge the ordinance's limits on door-to-door sales; the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where on March 1, 1937 it dismissed the appeal "for want of a substantial federal question."

World War II saw the company "cut its normal civilian output drastically to make brushes for the cleaning of guns"; Fuller's son Howard became president in 1943. After the war, Fuller added Daggett & Ramsdell, Inc.'s Débutante Cosmetics to its line of products it sold house-to-house, sold by a sales force of women, a strategy resurrected after a wartime attempt to have "Fullerettes" sell their core products. Fuller had evidence that women could succeed at sales since Stanley Beveridge, who had left his position as Fuller's sales vice president in 1929, had by 1949 employed women as "dealers" to grow sales at his own company, Stanley Home Products, to $35 million, exceeding Fuller's sales for the first time.

1959 to 1994

In 1959, Avard E. Fuller, one of the founder's sons, became Fuller Brush's president.

In 1966, Fuller Brush hired 17,500 women, motivated by the lack of qualified men (the unemployment rate was 3.8%) and the example set by Avon Products. Sara Lee Corporation acquired Fuller Brush in 1968; Avard Fuller retired a year later.

By 1985, all of the company's sales were still generated door-to-door. By the mid-1980s, in recognition of the increasing number of women working outside the home, Fuller Brush began introducing other sales channels beyond door-to-door, including a mail-order catalogue that sent out 10 million catalogues a year, and several outlet stores selling "slow-selling items, returned merchandise or slightly flawed goods"; by mid-1989, 35% of that year's estimated $160 million in sales came from catalogues, with another 5% of coming from its stores. Later that same year, a group of investors from Kansas headed by Lee Turner, a trial lawyer, took Fuller private; by 1991 the company now known as Fuller Industries and led by Stuart A. Ochiltree, had integrated its door-to-door and catalog business, with its 12,000 mostly-part-time sales representatives receiving commissions for sales from either channel.

CPAC subsidiary

In June 1994, Fuller, once again known as Fuller Brush Company, was acquired by CPAC Inc., a Leicester, New York-based manufacturer of photographic chemicals; CPAC took on the "heavy debt burden" accumulated while the company was private and whose annual sales, increasingly focused on chemicals, had shrunk to $24 million.

In 2007, CPAC Inc. was acquired by Buckingham Capital Partners in a leveraged buyout.

In February, 2012, Fuller Brush Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Locations

Connecticut

The main factory for the Fuller Brush Company was located in East Hartford, Connecticut during the 1960s,^{[citation needed]} where Fuller's son Avard ran the company. It had moved from Hartford on the other side of river some years earlier. The Research Division was there, along with the plastics molding operation.

The Industrial Brush Division was also at the East Hartford plant, where they made large motor-driven brushes for developing newspaper printing photo metal plates.^{[citation needed]} All the mops were sewn at this plant. The perfuming operation was there also, including a large machine to detect what was in perfume made by other companies.^{[citation needed]}

In front of the East Hartford plant was a large glass case with a stuffed large boar that represented the boar hair used in some of the original Fuller brushes.^{[citation needed]}

Fuller had a "private label" division, Charter Products, that sold duplicate products under other brand names chosen by the distributor. Avard's interest in boating resulted in experiments at the plant with plastic molding of port lights (windows) for boats, including full plastic hardware.^{[citation needed]}

New York

The plastic bottle and toothbrush manufacturing operation was in Philmont, New York.^{[citation needed]} According to Fuller's memoir, Fuller Brush distributed the Bristlecomb, a hairbrush introduced by the Mohawk Company in 1928. In 1942, Fuller Brush bought out the Mohawk Brush Company and subsequently all the hairbrushes and industrial floor brushes were manufactured at the Mohawk Plant in Albany, New York.

Great Bend, Kansas

Since 1973,^{[citation needed]} Fuller brushes and over 2,000 other Fuller products have been manufactured in Barton County, near Great Bend, Kansas.

Former employees

Examples of former employees include evangelist Billy Graham, who became a Fuller Brush salesman during the summer after high school, and outsold "every other salesman in North Carolina"; in his 1997 autobiography, Just As I Am, Graham describes in some detail his experiences selling Fuller brushes door-to-door.^{[citation needed]} Ellen Barkin was "born in the Bronx to a father who worked as a Fuller Brush man". Clifford Irving "was a Fuller Brush man in Syracuse."

More recently, Paul Reubens of Pee-wee Herman fame, worked as a Fuller Brush salesman while attending California Institute of the Arts.

Other former employees include Frank Gross, photographer Tom Leutwiler, J. Bruce Llewellyn (co-founder of 100 Black Men of America), Ed Mirvish, Jack Sensenbrenner, Kin Shriner, and Ed Stelmach.

In popular culture

• The Big Bad Wolf disguises himself as a Fuller Brush salesman in Disney's 1933 Academy Award-winning Silly Symphonies version of Three Little Pigs. Other examples include:
• In a 1944 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon titled "Duck Soup to Nuts" starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. At one point in the episode Daffy Duck is hiding underwater from Porky Pig who is playing the role of the duck hunter. Daffy, is found lounging in a hammock at the bottom of the lake, he spots Porky Pig who is wearing an old diving helmet. Daffy Duck is then drawn wearing a hat and holding a salesperson's very large briefcase. Daffy Duck then knocks on Porky's helmet. "Knock, knock!" to which Porky answers, "Who's there?". Daffy then exclaims "It's The Fuller Brush Man!", causing Porky to promptly open his mask, sending a flood of water into the diving helmet which in turn rockets Porky to the surface for air!
• The company also inspired two comedy films, The Fuller Brush Man, a 1948 movie starring Red Skelton and Janet Blair and The Fuller Brush Girl, a 1950 movie starring Lucille Ball and Eddie Albert.
• A Fuller Brush salesman is mentioned in French-Canadian author Gabrielle Roy's short story "Ely! Ely! Ely!", first published in 1979 then in 1988 in the book "De quoi t'ennuies-tu Eveline?"
• The Fuller Brush salesman is mentioned by rock and roots artist James McMurtry in the song Fuller Brush Man. The song appears on his 1995 release Where'd you Hide the Body, released by Columbia records.
• The 1972 song by John Prine "The Frying Pan" from Diamonds in the Rough begins with the line "I came home from work this evening, there was a note in the frying pan, it said cook your own supper babe, I've run off with the Fuller Brush Man."
• The song "Sneakin' Around" from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas(1984) mentions "jokes about the Fuller brush man," presumably of a bawdy nature.
• In a 1987 Episode (on Disc 2 of Disney's DuckTales), Uncle Scrooge (voiced by Alan Young) accidentally let a Fuller Brush salesman (Filler Brushbill) into his house and sells all kinds of junk that Donald Duck's nephews (Huey, Dewey and Louie) think it is not funny at all and when Scrooge Yelled "Filler Brushbill! Give Back That Book!" towards him while being stranded on a island with his nephews (from episode "Much Ado About Scrooge").