Cutco: Fellated by the Wall Street Journal

For those who don't know, I used to sell Cutco. I have an opinion or two about it. But first, an excerpt:

The knife company in question is Cutco Cutlery, an Olean, N.Y., manufacturer with $198 million in revenue, according to Sarah Baker Andrus, director of academic programs for Vector Marketing, Cutco's sales arm. Ms. Andrus says the company brings in 60% of its sales over the summer, when a force of 40,000 -- 85% of whom are students -- fan out to ply their wares.

These junior salespeople don't receive an hourly or weekly wage. Instead they earn a commission that starts at 10% and can climb to more than 50% for top sellers. Ms. Andrus says students who work the whole summer earn an average of $3,000 to $5,000. But there are plenty who earn more.

WSJ's backlogged articles don't retain the dates they were published (stupid), but this could not be further from the truth. In 2004, I sold $10,000 worth of knives, which, by the way, is a LOT of fucking knives. Wanna know what my summer haul was? $2,000. With the sliding commission scale, pending how much you sell, you make $10,000 if you sell $25,000 worth of Cutco, and make 50% commission from there on out.

SO.

In order to make $3,000-$5,000...you gotta be thinking 'sales' for a career beforehand. They hen pick schlubs to sell maybe $500 or $1,000 worth of product before they quit, and guess what? Cutco had to pay them DICK to do it! And they have the "office stars" who most likely will find a career in sales for all the schlubs to look up to and think "WOW! THAT COULD BE ME!" until they only sell $500 and quit.

Now, she did say 'those who stay for the entire summer'... Still, I'll put it this way. The Tinley Park office in IL was one of the top 3 offices in the nation in sales, my office. Over half the people I started with were actually fired (something they imply they'll never do) and couldn't stay the whole summer. I was on the top 15 board in sales the second half of the summer. Maybe 11 or 12 people sold more than I did in the number three office in the country.

Kind of a brilliant scheme. Kind of a dick-sucking article, serving zero purpose other than publicity. Fuck the Wall Street Journal.

I copied everything after the block-quote from an email I sent to my friend Eric after he sent me that article. I was gonna write something more blog-specific, but...I didn't.