Fuller Brush man

Door-to-door salesman. The Fuller Brush Company, founded in 1906, employed salesmen who went from house to house selling a variety of brushes, including a hairbrush that carried a lifetime guarantee. Among the company's accomplishments was making selling door-to-door an acceptable and profitable technique, one that was used (as long as local ordinances allowed) by sellers of encyclopedias, cosmetics, insurance, Girl Scout cookies, and other goods and services. Through much of the first half of the 20th century, visitors would ring a friend's or neighbor's doorbell and then answer the query, “Who's there?” with “It's the Fuller Brush man!”