Word: soaping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Chicago's tough South Side, Chuck Luckman sold soap to seven of the first eight stores he visited. (Later he quipped: "If I couldn't sell soap in a dirty slum area I might as well quit.") He went on to chalk up an office sales record...
...Wisconsin district. There he converted an $80,000 deficit into an $80,000 profit, kept climbing. A typical stunt: he bought two carloads of scrub pails, sold them to grocers at cost, then staged a spring-housecleaning sale in which the pails, filled with scrub brushes, clothespins and Colgate soap, were retailed as a "package" for 89?. Results were so spectacular that they caught the eye of Chicago's famed advertising millionaire, Albert Lasker (Lord & Thomas), who owned the Pepsodent Co., and a gloomy balance sheet. From a distance, Luckman looked like the man to fix this. Closeup...
Chuck Luckman knows that neither soap nor anything else can be sold by advertising alone. He is so dead certain that he keeps an eye on his and competitors' products by door-to-door selling himself...
Only two months ago he rang doorbells in Los Angeles. One matron complained that a competitor's soap wouldn't suds-up properly. Luckman, who thought it a good soap, challenged this. So he was hauled into the kitchen, made to roll up his sleeves and find out for himself. The woman was right. Her parting crack: "Young man, you have a lot to learn about the soap business...
...times he has given way to impulse. It meant goodbye to architecture. In 1931 few architects could support wives. So he was glad to get a "temporary" salesman's job with Colgate-Palmolive-Peetat$125amonth. From then on his life matched the triumphs of one of his own soap operas...