The salty salesmen of the Dead Sea

On January 29, 2010 · 18 Comments · In Living

Dead Sea Mudpack

The sales tac­tics of Vardi & Migdal — the Israeli com­pany with push­carts in malls all over the island — used to work. They use push­carts instead of rent­ing a shop space because if you were a sales­man in a shop, you wouldn’t be able to roam a mall’s thor­ough­fare and accost passers-by.

We have some nail buffer thing we bought about two years ago thanks to a sales­man who insisted on buff­ing Naomi’s and my nails. I agreed to buy the item just so he’d stop hold­ing our hands like we were con­duct­ing some seance.

One of their (pre­sum­ably Israeli, I don’t know for sure, I’m just assum­ing based on my racist pro­fil­ing of what they look and sound like) sales­men struck again yes­ter­day with the same aggres­sive approach.

Well, not quite the same. He approached Naomi and star­tled her by declar­ing, “Your skin has a lot of blem­ishes!”, fol­lowed by an enquiry, “What skin care prod­uct do you use?”

Thank­fully for him, before I could smack his pre­sum­ably Israeli head with my shop­ping bag, Naomi brushed him off, telling him she didn’t use any skin care prod­uct and didn’t care for his Dead Sea mineral-enriched jars of mud and crap.

Vardi & Migdal, your time is up. Pack up your push­carts and tra­verse back to whence you came! (After you wind up your local reg­is­tered com­pany and pay your taxes).

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  • http://twitter.com/miyagi/status/8350966700 Ben­jamin Lee

    From miyagi.sg: The salty sales­men of the Dead Sea http://miyagi.sg/2010/01/the-salty-salesmen-of-the-dead-sea/

  • http://lol8.blogspot.com/ STUMPBO

    I have the exact same expe­ri­ence with that nail buffer but I caved in and bought! It was my next few expe­ri­ences of being “attacked” which made me totally diss Vardi & Migdal now. I blogged about it a few months ago too (http://lol8.blogspot.com/2009/09/hard-sellings-kills.html).

    I was utterly put off by the hard sell­ing, which I think in our Asian con­text, it is con­sid­ered rude most of the time. I sec­ond Mr Miyagi, V&M should just pack and go.

  • han­solo

    Last month at Vivo, I saw one of these jok­ers drag­ging a woman to his push­cart. Luck­ily her 2 girl­friends won the human tug-of-war.

  • http://www.miyagi.sg Mr Miyagi

    Our encounter was at Vivo too. Prob­a­bly the same bugger.

  • http://www.the-ongies.blogspot.com/ Boon

    I always smile and go off. Now, not only them that is so pushy, there’s another group of peo­ple as well. Quite pissed when the guy kept talk­ing to me when Im find­ing my wife at the busy area…

  • http://twitter.com/heletan hele­tan

    I was at Vivo yes­ter­day! And I saw one of the men hold­ing a lady’s hand and demon­strat­ing some prod­uct. I remem­bered that inci­dent v clearly coz i was like “woah, smart move. our local sales­men would never do this!”

  • jia

    Not sure if it’s the same com­pany but i was dragged to one of the push­cart sell­ing dead sea mud prod­ucts @ cineleisure. The guy just wouldnt let go of my hand even though i insist i ain’t inter­ested. >:(

  • Anthea

    Post this in (an) Europe(an blog), and you’ll have some Israeli blog­gers labelling you an anti-Semite (accord­ing to these same blog­gers, BBC and CNN are anti-Semitic too…)

  • http://www.miyagi.sg Mr Miyagi

    Yeah, I fig­ured that might hap­pen, though, don’t get me wrong, I have great affin­ity with Israel. Some rel­a­tives of mine pro­nounce my name (Ben­jamin, not Miyagi) the Hebrew way.

  • Anthea

    As in Ben-yae-min? Ger­man speak­ers pro­nounce the name the same way too. Ever heard of the famous Aus­trian skier Ben­jamin Reich? :) Okay, now I’m rambling .…..

  • acid­flask

    There’s a com­pany here called Sabon, which also an Israeli cos­met­ics com­pany. The sales peo­ple there went to great lengths to explain how “the other com­pany” has a very high com­mis­sion rate and a very high markup, which makes all their sales­peo­ple super-aggressive.

  • http://www.lifealamode.com/ @Tabbulous

    This was back in like, 2000. After a cou­ple of years in col­lege here in the US, I had, nat­u­rally, gained weight from all the pizza and free flow of food. I went home for vaca­tion, was walk­ing around Orchard with a friend who had bad acne, and some guy came up to us and said (first to her) “Excuse me miss, don’t worry ah, not try­ing to pick you up. But have you tried to do any­thing about your skin?” and just as I was about to say some­thing rude he turns on me and says, “And you too, miss, I’m sure you are try­ing to lose weight too right?”

    We kept walking.

    That dead sea stuff looks narsty.

  • http://www.miyagi.sg Mr Miyagi

    Shoulda smacked him!

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  • Jes­si­cas­lim

    Hi,
    This is Jes­sica from The Straits Times. We are work­ing on a story about pushy push-cart salesmen/women, and would love to speak to you about your expe­ri­ence. Call me? 63195242 or 98508988.

    Look­ing for­ward to speak­ing with you.

    Jes­sica Lim
    Jour­nal­ist, Sin­ga­pore Press Hold­ings (News­desk — consumer)

  • fakezhenzi

    Yah i hate pushy sales­men who almost attack me with curl­ing rod.

  • fakezhenzi

    Can be con­sid­ered molest or not?

  • Yogv1987

    As a Chris­t­ian from a coun­try in Europe who lived these days in the United States and describes him­self as a Westerner. I want to express my objec­tion  to the anti-Semitic poli­cies that peo­ple express here! Especially the man who calls him­self as “Benjamin.”  /Ethnic asso­ci­a­tions such as those listed here between job char­ac­ter­is­tics form to a nation or state hap­pened in the Nazi Ger­many 71 years ago. could be that the way the sales­man accessed you was not adequate, but as a sober per­son you should always  keep in mind sev­eral things: 1. the way the sales­man approach you may be because of a fun­da­men­tal culture! 2. Perhaps this is the shape of ref­er­ence of that spe­cific per­son and do not toss it on entire group. I hope I put a little sense!

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