Made in the 1940s, this profile of the famed Fuller Brush Company and its products and manufacturing techniques, gives some insight into one of America’s most famous brands of the 20th Century. The film stars Alfred C. Fuller, who began what was to become Fuller Brush Company in a basement shop in Somerville, Massachusetts; In 1906 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut (the factory is seen at 3:00) and founded the company. The company began with door-to-door sales of brushes of various sorts, including hairbrushes with a lifetime guarantee for which they are famous. A brief bit of this selling is seen at the 2:30 mark, with a salesman going door to door with dusters. Much of the rest of the film shows the intricate, highly mechanized manufacturing process of various brush, mop and broom products on a vast assembly line at Hartford. In this era, many steps which today would be automated, are performed by hand including stitching of sweepers as seen at 20:00. At 24:00, tooth brushes are seen being made,with bristles applied one by one. Combs are seen inspected at 26:30, with imperfections ground off by hand. At 27:10, various waxes and other polish products are seen, and at 27:30 a design and mechanical department is seen which oversees the complex machinery of the factory. At 30:58, the bustling shipping department is seen.
In the mid 1930s, Fuller relocated from rented space on Union Place opposite Hartford’s railroad station, to a purpose-built sprawling factory and office complex on North Main St at the Windsor town line. 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.
Fuller’s oldest son Howard succeeded his father as president, serving until he and his wife Dora died in the high-speed crash of his Mercedes 300SL gullwing sports car in New Mexico in May 1959.
By the early 1960s, Fuller Brush had become an American institution, a family-owned business heralded for its stellar product line and a heritage of innovation, service, and value to its customers. In 1972, a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility was implemented in the American heartland. The Kansas-based plant remains to this day as the primary source for manufacture and distribution of a myriad of personal care products that bare the Fuller name. Under new ownership, the company is currently headquartered in Napa, California.
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