Pitching a local product that really cleans up

There is a reason why a good pitchman for Quick 'n Brite, a family-owned Mountlake Terrace firm, can make upward of $100 an hour at a fair or home show.

Human nature cannot resist a good salesman.

That's why those Billy Mays infomercials are still being aired four months after his untimely death.

Quick 'n Brite first was hawked at local fairs in 1979. Now it's sold by a dozen contracted sales people at some 400 fairs and shows around the country, grossing $1.2 million a year.

Of course, you might be one of the few who can ignore a good pitchman.

Come on, admit to at least stopping for a few seconds when hearing from one of the Quick 'n Brite pitchmen, at, you name it, the Puyallup Fair, the Tacoma Home and Garden Show or this weekend at the Seattle Home Show 2.

The pitch goes something like this:

"All you need to do is take your damp rag and your paste, and apply it directly on. Now this stain could be gum, tar, blood, crayon, lipstick, grape juice, coffee, tea, red wine. It will even do pet stains and the odors!"

Sue Corak, of Puyallup, paid attention recently at the Tacoma show.

She owns a 12-year-old Bernese mountain dog, "and it's a breed that's not supposed to live past eight or 10 years."

Guess what the aging dog is doing on her carpet?

"Nothing is working so far" to get rid of the smell, Corak says. She was ready to buy.

Quick 'n Brite is run by two brothers, Allan and Larry Gourlie. They bought it from their dad, Jack Gourlie, 73, in 1987.

Jack bought the formula from someone else back in the early 1970s. He had first hawked the cleaner door-to-door as a high-schooler in the early 1950s.

In those early days, the guy who had the formulation cooked it up over a stove in a motel room. When that guy agreed to sell, the Gourlie family used to mix the ingredients in a 30-gallon vat — replaced by a 55-gallon drum as business increased — that was heated over an open flame in the garage.

These days, the cleaner is mixed in a large warehouse the brothers own in Mountlake Terrace that has 11 1,000-gallon tanks.

Its dozen contracted pitchmen — split evenly between men and women — can make $20 to $100 an hour. For working six to seven months, after expenses, the pitchmen can make $45,000 to $50,000. A few reach $100,000 or more. The big spread in commissions has to do with obvious variables.

Some home shows are well advertised. Others aren't promoted well and barely have any attendance.

And, of course, there is the main variable: How good is the pitch from the pitchman?

Both Allan, 44, and Larry, 48, do pitching themselves, and recently Larry's daughter, Nicole Gourlie, 23, did some pitching, and so did Larry's son, Kyle, 24.

"The hardest thing is getting people to stop," says Larry. So at the booth there is a stack of small sponges to be given out as samples.

"Would you like a free sponge?'

Then, when the passer-by takes the sponge: "Would you like to see how our product works?"

Then, right to the demonstration. Show, don't tell.

You show the audience a piece of dirty carpeting.

Proceed to mark up the carpeting with a pen, then with a crayon.

Sometimes, somebody in the audience is asked for their pen. Make it real!

"The reason I use a crayon is that it's the same wax they use in shampoos, women's makeup ... ," said Kyle. "And just to show you how completely safe this product is, I'm gonna use my finger to clean."

And lo and behold, after rubbing the marked-up carpet with Quick 'n Brite and putting a dry towel on it, the crud really did come off onto the towel.

When the two brothers took over the business, through most of the 1990s they also began running infomercials, not just here but in some 40 countries. Sales skyrocketed and in 1996 went to $26 million.

But things happen.

The value of the dollar dropped. Infomercial fortunes are cyclical, and Billy Mays began hawking a competing product, OxiClean.

And so the brothers retrenched and went back to the fairs and home shows.

They're planning an infomercial comeback. But that's in the future.

Not long ago, Allan and Nicole spent three days at a recent show, where they pitched not just Quick 'n Brite but a related shower-cleaning product called "Scum Off Shower Cleaner." They grossed $13,000.

Nicole was nervous when she first starting to pitch at shows. Not anymore.

"I get asked after a demonstration, 'Does it really work?' " she says. "I tell them, 'I was born and raised on this product.' "

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