Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) an employee of a shop or saloon or other place of recreation and entertainment whose task is to lure passers-by in from the street; also used of a specific feature of the place which serves as an attraction.

1885		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 12 Dec. 2/3: As enthusiastic ‘puller-in’ for a second-hand clothing store.
1891		J.A. Riis How the Other Half Lives 104: Baxter Street, with its interminable rows of old clothes shops and its brigades of pullers-in.
1903		A.H. Lewis Boss 239: At each polling booth there would be a dozen pullers-in, to bring up the voters.
1927		W. Edge Main Stem 61: Most of these shops have an oily fellow, a ‘puller-in’, stationed at the door.
1938		H. Asbury Sucker’s Progress 440: Canfield lost money on the restaurant, although the daily receipts were more than $5,000, but it was an admirable puller-in.
1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl. §624.11: ‘barker,’ (A speaker outside a side show to entice customers), puller-in.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 261: The sign known to locals is a Negro sitting in front, who hustles business like a puller-inner for a ghetto second-hand clothing store.
1957		N. Algren ‘G-String Gomorrah’ in Entrapment (2009) 200: The patient old pullers hold the big doors wide to seduce the marks [...] ‘This is the place, buddy, this is it, the show where they go all the way’.
1964		E. Wilson Earl Wilson’s N.Y. 173: ‘Discos! Discos!’ the Latin record-shop puller-inner shouts.