Pet Detectives, Inc. (Pet), a Connecticut corporation, manufacturers pet food and sells it to pet stores across the country, including Maryland. Pet's employee sales representatives are instructed to travel to stores in Maryland to solicit orders of its pet food. If the store places an order for pet food, the sales representatives must transmit the order to Pet's Connecticut headquarters, and if the order is approved and accepted, Pet will ship the pet food to the Maryland store via common carrier.
Generally the sales representatives will meet with store buying managers to "talk up" the product to solicit large sales. However, the sales representative's also maintain an inventory of pet food in corporate vans used by the sales representatives to drive to the Maryland stores. When the stores have completely run out of inventory, which happens often, the sales representatives will sell the store dog food directly from this inventory for cash. The sales representatives will make these direct sales to stores at least twice a month.
How would a court, applying the analysis in Blue Buffalo Co. v. Comptroller of the Treasury, likely analyze the activities of Pet's sales employees?