Burien man is American icon: oldest active Fuller Brush Man

Yes, there still is a Fuller Brush Man. His name is Art Pearson. He's 89 and lives in Burien.

He's still selling, still calling on loyal customers. Just as he has for nearly 70 years.

In fact, the Fuller Brush Company of Great Bend, Kan. — yes, there's still one of those, too — believes he may be its oldest salesmen, and certainly one of the longest-working.

If you're younger than 35 — and that's half of America's population — you likely have never met a Fuller Brush Man, nor know much about him. Yes, they sell brushes, and Pearson does all that, along with more than 250 Fuller products that he'll gladly tell you about.

But it's more than that for his 4,000 to 5,000 active customers. That's right, that many thousand. He can hardly keep up, there are so many.

Sure, these customers could drive to a shopping mall and buy a hairbrush or some cleaning solution. It wouldn't be the same.

"I was 4 or 5 when I remember him coming around. He'd walk into the house and hang out for a while. I used to sit on his lap," said Linda Cole, of Normandy Park, who is now 54 and hugs Pearson whenever he comes to her door.

A different world

The Fuller Brush Man belongs to your mother's and grandmother's generations, a time when moms who stayed home were the norm.

So there actually was somebody to answer the door. And somebody would answer it without worrying about a stranger there.

For the first 50 years of its existence, beginning in 1906, the Fuller Brush sales force called on nearly nine out of 10 American homes.

Pearson became a Fuller Brush Man in 1938, when he was 20 years old and another Fuller Brush Man stopped by his family home.

"I wasn't doing anything, just sitting in my mother's chair, tilted back," Pearson remembers. "He said, 'You should sell Fuller Brush.' "

Back then, there were 270 other Fuller Brush Men in King County.

Now, he said, he's the only one left here from that era.

And Pearson still has so many loyal customers that he has no plans to retire. This is his life. His customers are his friends. They chat in the kitchen, about their kids, about life in general.

"You start sitting around the house, that's when you get into trouble," he said.

For the last couple of years, Pearson's son, Ken, a Seattle real-estate investor, has taken to driving his dad on his rounds. The elder Pearson can still drive, but the son just feels better that he's driving, what with some customers an hour away.

On a typical day, Pearson sells $300 to $400 of Fuller products, for which he keeps a 45 percent commission.

Through all the years, he's made a good living at it, working six days a week, supporting his family. In the mid-1960s, he remembers, he had 400 straight days of least $100 a day.

That was when $100 was worth something.

Winning respect

These days, most of the 6,000 Fuller Brush dealers are part-timers who do "a warm market approach," said Larry Gray, Fuller's vice president of consumer sales and marketing in Kansas. That means they just sell to family and acquaintances.

Back when Pearson started, it was a full-time job, making cold calls on neighborhoods, and the Fuller Brush Men got training.

One of the lessons "was that you always wore a shirt and tie," Pearson said.

"You're a businessman, and people respect you."

To this day, Pearson never goes out without pressed pants, a jacket, and that shirt and tie.

He figures that over the years he's called on some 100,000 different homes, from Lake City to South King County, and he said he seldom was turned away.

"We had a big suitcase with velvet inside," he said. "We put the suitcase on the right-hand side of the door."

Then he'd knock on the door, and stepped back two paces, so as not to appear overbearing. When the homemaker opened the door, she would see Pearson holding a vegetable brush and a spatula.

"Which gift would you like?" he'd ask. "May I step in and give it to you?"

Inside that suitcase were the samples. Pearson said he always made a sale.

"When I go into a house, my eyes wander through the house quickly. I suggest, 'Maybe you need a wall brush for those cobwebs, or window cleaner.' "

Pearson would demonstrate the products, maybe using a stainless steel pad ("Over 600 feet of stainless steel that doesn't rust and won't scratch the stove!") along with Fulsol, an all-purpose cleaner ("Read this testimonial, from Elizabeth Gukich, of Oconomowoc, Wis., who's used it for 30 years!").

No computer for him

Nowadays, Pearson seldom does cold calls, unless he happens to see a prospective customer when driving around with his son.

Instead, each day Pearson is on the phone, calling on those 4,000 to 5,000 customers. He doesn't use a computer. He compiles sales slips in dozens of cardboard boxes according to neighborhoods. The slips have the customers' phone numbers.

Over the months that Ken Pearson has driven his dad, the son has come to know people such as Susan Fitzpatrick, who became a customer 30 years ago.

Pretty much any cleaning items she has in her Normandy Park home have been delivered by Pearson, she says.

They'd chat at the dining-room table. He always called her "Mrs. Fitzpatrick," and she always called him "Mr. Pearson."

Ken Pearson said he hadn't realized until driving his dad around that all those customers were a second family to him. More than 100 of them so far have said they'll show up for Art Pearson's early 90th-birthday party today at the Burien Elks Lodge.

So now, at age 63, even though he's wasn't thinking about a second career, Ken Pearson has made a decision.

When his dad can no longer be the Fuller Brush Man to all those customers, Ken Pearson will take over.

"I never knew the love and respect they have given him," said the son. "This is a legacy."

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com