Cutco and Vector Marketing

A few days ago, a friend asked if someone she knew could make a sales call at my house. It involved selling knives (Cutco, a brand I'd never heard of) and my friend said she's delighted with the knives she bought. Also, Cutco hires a lot of students, but that they get paid just for making the presentation, so the obligation was low.

Today, a very sweet woman showed up at my door, a recent high-school graduate bound for Earlham this fall. She perkily told me about all the great benefits of Cutco knives, often adding "and that's a great thing!!!!!!" (yes, you could hear the punctuation marks in her pitch).

Annoying moment: as she presented knives to me, she'd describe how they were used and then ask "and how do you think you'd use this knife?" as if I were a second-grader in serious need of a remedial quiz. At one point, I said that I wouldn't buy the knife under discussion -- it seemed too gadgety, and she looked crestfallen. I also declined to buy any knives today -- I said that I'd have to do some research. Which I did.

Well oy vey with a little schmear. Where to start? Apparently these are decent knives, but not great. They're also considered to be overpriced, and they're never used by professionals. (Chefs use knives such as Wusthof.)

And the company -- I found lots of complaints by former employees, along with descriptions about how the company exploits students. They're just this side of legal, and apparently, allegedly, just that side of moral. It's a multi-level marketing scheme whereby as you move up in the organization, you get more money for each recruit and each sale. But it all starts with a recruit having to attend training without pay, then pay for more mandatory training and pay for a "starter kit." Then the salespeople have to beg each client for references to other potential clients. There was some discussion about whether the company actually pays all it owes to its salespeople.

On one web site, the administrator piped in to say that most of the "pro" postings (which were nearly illiterate and laced with obscenities and bizarrely wild allegations) were from the same IP address. Kind of makes you go "huh," doesn't it?

Anyways, as bad as I feel for this very sweet saleswoman (who I hope picks another career, sweetness being her sole attractive selling attribute), there's no sale. But perhaps I will consider a pair of Wusthof shears.