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| Found these two jewels listed on e-Bay in Sept 2022 |
After a rather short period of time, I was called into the main office and informed that Kansas City was going to have a new position open - a new sales force to do nothing but sell and promote new business. We were going to install teletype machines in the offices of our better customers. To properly handle these new accounts, they would need more sales people and wanted me to accept the job as sales manager.
I was immensely happy with the promotion and felt Della's old friend Blume didn't hurt my chances any. Regardless of who the good fairy was, I was really getting a big break from somewhere and I was overjoyed.
This was, however, the second business I was connected with that had a rather dark future. The first was the railroads. They were now on their way out as new highways were being formed. Now it looked as though the communication companies, The Western Union, and the Postal Telegraph, were both on their way out. In any event, they were going to have to look in other directions for revenue.
The telephone and printing machines were making huge inroads into the telegraph business and were soon to enforce the amalgamation of the only two existing telegraph companies, the Western Union and Postal.
I decided it was time I started looking for something new. Largely through luck, a friend of mine introduced me to a friend of hers who was looking for someone to promote a new lipstick she had invented. I knew nothing about the cosmetic business, but welcomed the challenge of promoting something new. After several meetings and a great deal of consideration, we decided to give Clara Harris a whirl.
NOTE: In searching for Clara Harris, I see a Clara F. Harris, but there is nothing about the lipsticks and no pictures. I remember Grandma having a small compact with rouge and a little pad use to apply it. Also remember a lipstick tube with a rubber tip at the end for blending. Today I see there was a patent for that lipstick case because it swiveled up and down. I sure wish I had a picture of those products. Grandma used them her entire life.
There were several reasons for going with a new company. We knew that Postal and Western Union were consolidating, and that the Western Union would be the dominant company in the merger. After having spent 20 years with the Postal, endeavoring to help bring them up to the Western Union level in size and importance, I disliked the idea of being a member of the junior company. We had fought them too long. At this particular time, the Postal had 27 branch offices in Kansas City alone, and as branch manager, I had been instrumental in opening up many of the new branch offices the past few years. Western Union had more offices in Kansas City than we did, but we were closing in rapidly on them.
I picked up an old retired salesman by the name of Morris to help out in the promotion of the new enterprise and act as a salesman for beauty shops and cosmetic houses that sold to the cosmetic trade. He was a first class salesman in every way, and I believe he could have sold bathtubs to Eskimos. He soon built up an excellent following in the area surrounding Kansas City. He was a great kidder and the women loved him, although he was probably seventy years old at the time. He had never married and could get more free meals from beauty shops than anyone I have ever seen.
I started out with the wholesale houses and large chain drug stores. I was doing an excellent business. Our featured article was a patented lipstick with a rubber blender attached. It would remain on the lips longer than an ordinary lipstick without the patented blender. It was an excellent seller and business started off with a bang.
Just as we were getting well on our way, Pearl Harbor came along and I was placed in charge of training soldiers, both men and women, in a large training school. (Training for telegraph operators?)
We graduated several hundred students from our school within a few months, but they kept coming. One class would no sooner graduate until another was waiting for us. We enjoyed the work but felt depressed for days when a class graduated and was shipped out.
After the closing of the radio facilities towards the end of the war, we reopened our cosmetic business and it once more started presenting many headaches. We were still unable to obtain metal cases for our products, but were getting along quite nicely with plastic cases. When the metal cases finally became available, we picked up all our old plastic cases and replaced them with metal containers free of charge to the customers. We didn't realize just how many plastic containers were still on the dealers' shelves in the stores - there were literally hundreds of thousands of them. We replaced them all with new metal cases and thought our worries were over.
This didn't prove to be the case, however, and we found that companies that were better known that we were seemed to do considerably more business than we did. They sold the better-known brands and ours set on the shelves. It seemed we just couldn't get rolling again.
One weekend while in the depths of despair, I called our representative, Lara, in New Orleans. While the discussion centered around what was the best thing we could do to get the business rolling again, Lara suddenly exclaimed, "Let's go fishing." I immediately replied, "Get your coat on - let's go." It was a stupid thing to do but seemed to make sense at the time. We headed for a well-known spot on the Gulf. While waiting on gas at Biloxi, we walked into a wayside bar filled with drinking soldiers and marines. They were having a gay time; some on their way home and some headed for reassignments. We joined them 100% and had a wonderful time.
The Two Fishermen
I will admit the binge didn't solve all of our problems, but for the time being, at least, it helped us forget them.
While selling chain drug stores in Texas, I was able to sell a nice young Mexican manage with 27 stores in one large Texas town. I told her, when selling, we would send some of our representatives to contact each of her 27 managers, and endeavor to show them, through demonstration, the proper manner in which to use our cosmetic items. We also told her we would pay each salesperson a 10% bonus P.M. (pocket money) for their total sales of our cosmetics each week. A good cosmetic girl could make a considerable amount of change this way.
The drug chain was behind us 100% and the buyer went out of her way to be nice to us and promote our merchandise.
We were short of sales girls at the time so I volunteered to do the explaining myself. I was about half way through with my presentations after the second day when I met the most beautiful girl I think I ever met. She was an Indian girl about twenty-five years old with an unbelievable complexion. She was sharp and grasped the sales pitch immediately, and I was immensely impressed with her potential. After presenting my talk to her, she asked me if I ever used any girls to do the things I was doing. Her name was Lola.
I told her girls did practically all of it and the only reason I was there was because we had none available at the time. She wanted to try it but I told her we couldn't use her because we did no proselyting of our customers' help. The only way we could ever use her was if she had been free of the drug chain for several months.
One day I was in Kansas City at the office when a call came in for me from Lola. About six months ago her mother in Oklahoma City had taken ill and was unable to take care of the chores around the house. The mother had no one to assist her, as she lived alone, and Lola had quit her job to take care of her. Her mother had now recovered and was able to take care of herself. Lola wanted a job.
I told her I had good and bad news for her. The good news was that we had a job for her at the wholesale house in Oklahoma City. The bad news was that I had no one to break her in, and the job opened the next Monday morning.
I was leaving at 1 pm for Tulsa for a 5 pm appointment, and had a reservation out of Tulsa for 7.30 am the next day for San Antonio. She wanted to know if I would see her after my appointment if she came to Tulsa by bus. Taken completely by surprise, I told her I would.
After the interview, she was there waiting for me. After thorough grilling, it was my conclusion that I had met a most competent and capable sales girl, and did not hesitate to hire her.
Lola made a very able sales rep. She was one of the highest we had in obtaining results. After very high marks for a couple of years, I asked her to meet me in New York for a general meeting of all the wholesale drug houses in the country.
We expected to gain considerable new business there through our room display at a big hotel where the convention was held. I never had such a let down in my life. Something was wrong with Lola. She was drunk and did a very poor job of representing the F&M Co., and I told her so. (NOTE: F&M? Later there was F&M Jewelry, but this is about Clara Harris. Maybe he had his own company to represent Clara Harris.)
I sent her to Cincinnati as a last chance to either make good, or be fired. She promised to do better and remain absolutely sober. The following day after I returned to Kansas City, I received a letter from her stating she was leaving our company. She realized she needed to do something for her country and had joined the Marines. She was leaving in two days for boot camp. I always thought very highly of Lola.
The Little Black Bag
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We didn't realize it at the time, but too much stress was being applied in an effort to get the company going ahead at full speed after the war was over. Everyone tried to outdo everyone else and this is one time I believe the employees were oversold. They were showing fatigue, edginess, and doing too much drinking. We had oversold ourselves.
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