1959 to 1994
In 1959, Avard Ells Fuller (the founder's younger son, aged 44) became Fuller Brush's president.[7] Having long outgrown the Hartford location, in 1960 the company moved to a new, purpose-built campus on Long Hill St., East Hartford, Conn. That year, Alfred C. Fuller published his autobiography A Foot In the Door; the title described a salesman's technique in prolonging a conversation to turn it into a sale.
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.[8]
Consolidated Foods, now Sara Lee Corporation, acquired Fuller Brush in 1968; Avard Fuller retired a year later.[7] Office operations moved initially to Niles, Illinois, then relocated along with manufacturing and research to Great Bend, Kansas in 1973.[3]
As of 1985, all of the company's sales were still generated door-to-door.[9] By the mid-1980s, however, in recognition of the decrease in the number of women at home during the day, Fuller Brush began introducing other sales channels beyond door-to-door. This included a mail-order catalog that sent out 10 million catalogs 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 catalogs, with another 5% coming from its stores.[9] 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, decided that the future of the company was in multi-level marketing, which essentially destroyed the entire door-to-door sales force. Although it has been rumored that the company 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, this is not accurate. There was a marketing plan promoting this idea brought forth by both Michael Bravakis and David Litt, appropriately named the Cross Channel Productivity Plan; however, it was rejected as not feasible under then-current CEO Steve Coggin. If that plan was to be undertaken, it would have been outright able to increased the revenue and profitability of the company, possibly saving it from the disastrous multilateral marketing decision and allowing it to transition to future online sales.[10]
