I remember the 'Betterware Man' well - in part because before moving out of my parents in 1977 I bought shoe-polishing brushes and a set of kitchen brushes for cleaning pots and pans - and they are still in use today! (By the way, it was "Betterwear".)
My Mum used to buy junk from the Betterware person (not sure if male/female). One was a large plastic salad bowl 'thingy' with a supposed vacuum seal and a plastic 'button' on the top.
I've corrected your post to avoid embarrassment.
Still, "grown up companies" were using both Skype for Business and Lync for years before Teams debuted.
Betterware and Kleeneze are both still around and very occasionally someone will start up as a rep and post a catalogue through the letterbox. Nobody seems to do the job for very long, though. The products being available online is probably the main reason, along with people having different working patterns. As far as I remember the reps had to buy the catalogues, so that's a significant outlay before they make any sales, and there is the risk that they won't get them back.
Tupperware parties were quite a regular occurrence when my folks lived in RAF married quarters and occasionally I'd be taken along to one if it was during the school holidays. I still have some Tupperware tubs in the cupboard, some of which are possibly older than me!
I can fully believe that, yes. My stance was purely in esponse to post #2569's comment:
It was both. Stanley Cohen's business (possibly Betterwear Products Ltd) was apparently originally known as 'Betterwear' before then being rebranded 'Betterware' in or around 1970.
Interesting - the brushes I bought in 1977 were still marked as Betterwear - presumably too expensive to alter the moulds, or they'd got a good stock of them in hand!
And the "man from the Pru" who called to collect insurance premiums.
Associated with that, there were the areas within the goods yard at stations where various coal merchants held their stock of coal of various types - anthracite, coke, etc.
There's three at my dad's place which he uses as additional sheds...
Nowhere near as long ago but teenage me once decided to be clever and get rid of an old fabric softener bottle on my heritage railway by chucking it on a fire. Of course it had been in use storing paraffin for the tail lamps and promptly exploded.
Another thing that’s still going in the rural Peak District. It’s amazing that you can (landline) phone up in the morning and with luck the little drop-side will chug up in the afternoon with the sacks. The merchant still operates out of a former station goods yard too.
I have two small (1.5m x 1.5m) brick sheds in my back garden. Being on a steep hillside, they sit under the garage floor, and that floor has a metal hatch to drop coal into one of the sheds. All built in the 1970s.
There were two local coal merchants that we could request deliveries from. The first was McGruther and Marshall, which I believe was Inverness based; I can't be certain, but I think they used to operate from the coal yard adjacent to Elgin station. I think they ended up being bought out by another company. The other was J.G. Dick, who still seems to be in business. Both firms used flatbed lorries and I'm fairly certain that they were Bedford TKs.
My grandmother's house, being on the downward hill side of her road, had a 'semi-basement' ground floor, a first floor that was about three steps up from the pavement and a second floor. The formal front door to the first-floor was reached by a short path, in the middle of which was a circular manhole cover. Our local coal merchant (with a horse-drawn cart) would turn up when requested and empty several sacks of coal into the coal cellar creating a tremendous noise.
That’s a huge, (and hitherto little known), unit of measurement as well…
I used to work on a project between the UK and Australia. Not only were the dates totally different, but they were 'springing forward' around the time we were 'falling back', which meant that the time difference increased by two hours
A well-known high street retailer of lingerie and 'marital aids' used to operate a similar model - my mother-in-law usefully supplemented their household income by running 'parties' as one of their reps.
That’s a huge, (and hitherto little known), unit of measurement as well…
Opps! Must have been influenced by sailing on into my memories!
