# S. B. Fuller

Founded Fuller Products Company in Chicago in 1935, building a direct-sales cosmetics and household-products business that by the late 1940s employed approximately 5,000 door-to-door sales agents, per his own accounts in interviews collected by the Oral History Project of the Chicago History Museum. In 1947, Fuller purchased the South Center Department Store at 47th Street and South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive) in Bronzeville, one of the first major department stores in the neighbourhood to come under Black ownership. Fuller mentored John H. Johnson, who went on to found Johnson Publishing Company and Ebony magazine. Fuller Products faced financial difficulties in the 1960s and 1970s; Fuller's emphasis on self-reliance and entrepreneurship as a pathway out of poverty has been cited widely in accounts of post-war Black business development on Chicago's South Side.

- Region: 773
- Affiliation: Fuller Products Company
- Industry: Cosmetics Manufacturing, Retail Department Stores
- URL: https://xecon.dev/773/profiles/people/s-b-fuller
- Updated: 2026-05-27

## Sources

1. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_B._Fuller)
2. [S-cook](https://www.s-cook.org/samuel-b-fuller/)
3. [Encyclopedia](https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/fuller-s-b-1895-1988)