Alfred Carl Fuller
The Fuller Brush Man (iconic industrialist)
1885 to 1973, Pleasant Valley Cemetery
It’s not hard to find Alfred Carl Fuller’s monumental memorial at Pleasant Valley Cemetery.
This iconic door-to-door salesman from the early to mid-1900s rose to relevance as a Welsford-born American entrepreneur who turned a line of brushes into a multi-million-dollar business venture. Aptly dubbed the Fuller Brush Man, the self-proclaimed “country bumpkin” lived out a real-life rags to riches tale as he evolved from one of 12 siblings growing up on a family farm in Nova Scotia, to the founder of the world-renowned Fuller Brush Company.
According to Encyclopedia.com, Fuller started out as a brush and mop salesperson in 1905. He had relocated to Boston to live with his sister and explore new opportunities at the age of 18, and gradually saved enough money to start his own business.
He developed a product line that would eventually grow to include more than 700 types of brushes to meet a housekeeper’s every need based on the knowledge he gained interacting with customers. “The line of brushes sold by Alfred Fuller (1885-1973) took him from rags to riches. He felt that products should be made to work correctly and to last a long time,” the website states. “This idea was new at the beginning of the 20th century, when cleaning tools were poorly constructed and needed to be replaced often.”
Fuller’s success would eventually catch the attention of filmmakers in Hollywood, inspiring a Fuller Brushman movie and “The Fuller Brush Woman” film starring Lucille Ball. Encylopedia.com reports the Connecticut-based business, formally named Fuller Brush Company in 1910, reached $15 million in sales and had thousands of door-to-door salesmen working as independent contractors on the streets by 1923.
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