The Watkins Man

J.R. Watkins Pain Relieving
Liniment, the original first product

     After Mommy and Grammy died, Daddy and Uncle Frank decided to sell the milk cows.  Our weekly income from selling cream stopped.  Until then, Daddy sold the cream at the creamery in town, took the cream check to the IGA grocery store, and bought food and supplies for the coming week.  Daddy could not boil water without burning it so given his limited sense of what was needed for cooking, we sometimes had a humorous variety of things to eat.  But we did have food.

    Daddy had chosen to stay on the farm with us children in order to keep our small family together.  Financially, it probably would have been easier for him to move to town where he could have found a day job.  But he rejected that idea because we children would have been alone at home for long periods of time while he worked.  Alternatively, he could have given us up totally to Mommy's relatives in New England, but he did not want to part with us permanently or to have the three of us split up among relatives.

     Being a single parent in those days, particularly a man almost 50 years old, was neither common place nor easy.  None of the many support organizations available today existed then and certainly not in rural country.  Uncle Frank and Aunt Opal, our closest relatives, other than the many dead ones in the cemetery, lived a hundred miles away.  Most of our friends had their own farms several miles away.  Daddy had his back to the wall, considering many possible ways to make enough money to at least buy the food we could not grow or raise on the farm.

     Finally, Daddy decided to become a Watkins salesman.  He had had years of sales experience selling razor blades and other miscellaneous items on the streets of New York City during the Great Depression.  He reasoned that we children would be in school during the day while he was out selling Watkins products.  The necessary farm work would have to be done early mornings, evenings, and on the weekends.  Lastly, we all liked Watkins products and would have some for personal use at a reduced price.  It seemed like a good plan.

     From my earliest memories, I can picture the Watkins Man who came to our farm every month or two.  The J. R. Watkins Company had begun making and selling natural products in the 1860's in Minnesota.  The very first product was liniment for muscle aches and pains, a product that Daddy liked. Mommy and Grammy loved the vanilla, black pepper, and cinnamon.  We kids like the concentrated fruit-flavored drinks that Mommy diluted with water.  Watkins products were not available in stores, only from the door-to-door salesman.  He drove into our yard with a car or truck loaded with tempting things for sale.  The products were of excellent quality then and probably still are today.

     Daddy bought the initial products needed to start his new business from an established distributor in a nearby town who was also supposed to provide Daddy products, sales literature, and training.  Daddy could replace items he sold and submit new orders he received through this distributor who was like an up-line sponsor in more recent multi-level marketing organizations.  We were encouraged because our "sponsor" distributor had had a thriving business for a number of years.

     Daddy and Uncle Frank stored the Watkins products, an investment of almost a thousand dollars, in our basement.  On sales trips, Daddy planned to carry enough of the popular items so that he could not only leave some purchases immediately but also take orders which would require a return trip resulting in potentially even more sales.

     Of course, Daddy could not go about selling Watkins products anywhere he wanted.  He had a specific territory assigned to him by the Watkins Company.  The good news was that he had a very large area in which to make sales.  The really bad news was that the territory was a minimum of 15 miles away from home and was primarily the Indian Reservation, a wild, sparsely inhabited country to the northeast of us.

     Five days each week, Daddy loaded up the '49 Ford with Watkins products, catalogs, and product brochures.  He drove us to our country school for the day and then headed north to make sales calls.  At the end of each day, he came back home after driving for hours and hours, having made only one or two small sales and often none at all.

     It was not a situation that more advertising, more travel, or more sales visits could fix.  Most of the people in his territory were Indians who were extremely poor.  They were worried about what the next meal would be and had little interest in pepper or vanilla, no matter how good the products might be.

     Our car was a constant concern.  We knew that driving the car so many hours each day, up and down hills on the rough, dirt roads of the Reservation would eventually lead to a breakdown, potentially miles from a mechanic or any living person.  Gasoline, tires, and maintenance were expensive and Daddy's meager sales could not even cover the overhead costs.  From the beginning, the Watkins business operated in the red with little hope of improvement.  Daddy became very tired and discouraged from driving day after day, the long hours managing the farm work evenings and weekends, and the fact that our original need to find income still loomed over us.

     Daddy and Uncle Frank decided after a couple of months that the Watkins business could never be profitable given the current sales territory.  We were told that no other territories were available.  Getting out of the business, however, revealed the really nasty side of the whole Watkins adventure.

     The thousand dollars for upfront Watkins products was a large amount of money in the 1950's.  The distributor that had sold us the product had a good business in a good territory where people actually had money to spend.  Having taken the money Daddy paid him for our Watkins products, the distributor pocketed the profit and took care of himself at Daddy's expense.  He had sold Daddy start-up Watkins products that were at or near expiration, products our sponsor would have soon lost money on.  That meant that he would not incur that loss himself when the products expired and could no longer be sold or shipped back to the Watkins Company.

     It was not surprising, therefore, that when Daddy discontinued selling Watkins products and tried to return our inventory for reimbursement, neither our sponsor distributor nor the Watkins Company would accept return or make good on the cost of our products.

     It was a hard lesson at a time when we could not afford such a lesson.  Daddy and Uncle Frank were very trusting and somewhat naive.  They had not checked product expiration dates because they basically did not anticipate that anyone would be so dishonest and underhanded.

     We had Watkins products in our basement for many months and we used them, expired or not.  Years later, Watkins established kiosks in shopping malls.  I occasionally stopped to look at the old familiar products that had been available for decades, but Watkins has never ever received one dime from me for anything.  While the company was not directly responsible for our loss, they also did not deal with their dishonest salesman who was our sponsor and continued to have a thriving business.