Early 2000s door-to-door vacuum sales in Northern Ontario
I was in my early 20s around the early 2000s in Northern Ontario doing vacuum sales (TriStar Products). It was one of my first jobs and I didn’t really know much about it at the time, and I didn’t end up staying in that kind of work for very long. It was a door-to-door/demo-style sales job. We were based out of Sudbury, Ontario, and would go around the Sudbury area and North Bay, Ontario trying to sell.
It felt like a very fast-moving, high-energy setup—lots of driving, knocking on doors, and learning as you went. We also had a phone team calling people from the phone book, and we’d mail out “scratch card” style mailers where people could win a prize and then call in for a vacuum demo. Looking back, it all feels pretty surreal. I can’t believe I did that kind of job, I couldn’t imagine doing something like that today.
I’ve long moved on from that kind of work, but I randomly thought about it, and the people who worked with me recently and wondered if companies like that still even do door-to-door vacuum sales today, or if that whole style of selling has disappeared.
Curious if anyone else had similar jobs back then or knows if that kind of thing still exists.