Meet Cathy Mendell, college dropout, successful Tupperware seller, corporate climber, down-size victim and now a hot commodity in the direct sales world.

Mendell grew up in Medford and lives on a 90-acre spread with her husband, Arlan, off Sterling Creek Road.

But several days a month, the 47-year-old Mendell leaves the idyllic serenity of the Siskiyou foothills for corporate America as vice president of sales for SimplyFun, a Bellevue, Wash., direct sales start-up.

The 90-minute flight to Sea-Tac Airport south of Seattle is far more convenient than the cross-continent journeys to Orlando, Fla., where she worked for Tupperware Corp., or Manhattan, where she could see the Statue of Liberty from her Family Books at Home office.

"I think I was like a lot of people in direct sales thinking ‘I’ll do this for a little bit,’ but not thinking of it as a career," she says.

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Of course, Mendell never intended to jet around the country — her desire was to be a doctor.

After starting her family during the late 1970s, Mendell enrolled at Southern Oregon University. Her plan was to transfer to the University of Oregon and take up pre-med. Then in the summer of 1982 with three sons ranging from 1 to 4, she decided to earn a little extra money selling Tupperware. Within three years, her part-time sales became a full-time pursuit.

In 1991, Mendell was awarded the area franchise for Tupperware. Her business career took flight as she developed the second-fastest growing franchise in the company. Recruiting and training sales people for the area and filling their orders, she was pulling in $80,000 annually.

Her success led to a corporate position as commercial sales director at Tupperware’s headquarters, developing a direct sales division targeting government, restaurants and institutional buyers.

She sold her local franchise and began alternating weeks in Florida and Oregon.

Mendell was promoted to regional vice president and given a six-figure salary to oversee 15 western states in 1994. Again she negotiated a long commute instead of a move to Florida.

"I dug my heels in and refused to move," Mendell says. "I love Southern Oregon so much that I told them I wouldn’t move. My family is here and it wouldn’t work to move my husband’s construction company to Florida."

But the Tupperware career came to an abrupt end in June of 2003, when the $1.2 billion company restructured and cleaned out two layers of management.

"That was a shocker," Mendell admits. "There wasn’t any problem with performance, it was a strategic decision to redo the entire sales. channel."

In short, the 55-year-old company did away with regional managers and eliminated area franchises.

"Everyone who sells Tupperware deals directly to the company now," Mendell says. "It remains to be seen how things are going to work there. It was sort of like changing the tire while speeding down the freeway."

In February 2004, she became director of training and sales development for Family Books at Home, which was in its launch phase. She loved the opportunity and work environment, but couldn’t turn down the offer that came eight months later.

"I got a phone call from a consultant in the direct sales industry," Mendell says. "I wasn’t unhappy and I felt like a heel abandoning the cause, but it was too good to pass up."

She reported to SimplyFun in January and the board-game company founded by a trio of Washingtonians now has sellers in 23 states, mostly west of the Mississippi.

"We have sales forces in the hundreds," Mendell says, declining to be more specific. "Our projected first-year sales are in the millions."

The non-electronic bells and whistles games are sold like Tupperware — at parties.

"When people go to our parties, they learn how to play the games by playing games," Mendell says. "That’s different when you go into a store and pick a game off the shelf; 52 percent of games that are bought that way are never played and stay in the shrink-wrap."

While most sales parties cater to women, she says SimplyFun appeals to men, who make up a considerable part of the sales force. Scores of game designers call on the Bellevue company attempting to market their ideas.

She spends two or three weeks a month at home, and the commute from the Rogue Valley, her husband, two grandsons, two dogs and 13 horses is a lot shorter than it used to be.

"Now it’s 1½ hours on Alaska Air (Horizon) and I grab a rental car and can be at the office by 8:30 a.m.," she says. "How great is that?"

Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com