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Ms. Burton established and was personally involved in the
operation of petitioner’s public relations division, creating
various advertising and sales-related literature and other
promotional materials. She designed the packaging material for
petitioner’s products and promoted petitioner to various national
and regional newspapers. As petitioner’s spokespersons and
goodwill ambassadors, Ms. Burton and Denovan planned and
personally participated in national trade shows to promote
petitioner’s products since 1987.
Ms. Burton implemented a strategic change in petitioner’s
marketing focus. Prior to her becoming president, petitioner had
sold its goods primarily to small giftware shops. She eliminated
petitioner’s catalog/retail sales and concentrated on selling
petitioner’s products on a wholesale basis. To implement the
change in marketing focus away from the small giftware shops to
the large national department stores, new sales representatives
were required.
Denovan replaced petitioner’s existing force of giftware
sales representatives with houseware sales representatives.
Denovan assembled a nationwide team of sales representatives,
managed through a network of sales organizations. Ms. Burton and
Denovan negotiated commission agreements with petitioner’s sales
representatives and agreed to pay the sales representatives a
commission of up to 15 percent. As a result of its change in
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Last modified: May 25, 2011