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this is the company that put mascara on lashes and food on the tables, that fights wrinkles with one hand and breast cancer with the other. That knows the value of a perfect lip, but still opens its mouth speaks out against domestic violence and for woman’s financial independence. This is the company that not only brings beauty to doors, but also opens them. The company that supports 6 million Representatives in over 100 countries. This is Avon. The company, for 125 years, has stood for beauty, innovation, optimism and above all for women.
About the AVON PRODUCTS INC Company
Avon was first established in 1886 as The California Perfume Company and was founded by a 28 year old man named David H. McConnell. David was a door-to-door book salesperson and he used the perfumes to entice women to purchase his books. The 1st Avon lady was a 50 year old mother of two called Mrs Albee.
In 1928 David changed the name to the iconic brand it is known as today “AVON” after his visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, England due to his love for the playwright William Shakespeare. In 1939 the name of the company was changed to AVON PRODUCTS INC. David McConnell offered a unique way for women to take control of their lives and move towards economic independence at a time before women had the right to vote and when most were expected to remain within the home rather than earn a living.
Avon, the company for women, is a 
leading global beauty company, with nearly $10 billion in annual revenue. As one of the world’s largest direct sellers, Avon is sold through more than 6 million active independent Avon Sales Representatives both men and women. Avon products are available in over 100 countries, and the product line includes color cosmetics, skincare, fragrance and fashion home products, featuring such well-recognized brand names as Avon Color, ANEW, Skin-So-Soft, Advance Techniques, and mark.
In the UK, Avon now reaches one in three women, with six million women seeing an Avon brochure every three weeks.
Avon provides innovative, quality products to customers at competitive prices. Product lines include Avon make-up, Avon fragrance, ANEW skincare, Skin So Soft and Advance Techniques. Avon also sells an extensive range of wellbeing products, jewellery, lingerie, accessories and gifts. More products carry the Avon name than any other brand in the world.
As the company for women, Avon is committed to supporting the causes that matter most to women – breast cancer and domestic violence. Globally, Avon philanthropy has donated more than $957 million to date as one of the world’s largest supporter of women’s causes. Read more about the causes Avon supports in the UK.
The Avon VisionTo be the company that best understands and satisfies the product, service and self-fulfilment needs of woman globally. Our five values are Trust, Respect, Belief, Humility and Integrity. We believe that everything we do, everything we say, and everything we produce as a company are infused with these values.
Avon Founder David H. McConnell offered women a rarity in 19th century America: a chance at financial independence. In 1886, it was practically unheard of for a woman to run her own business. Only about 5 million women in the United States were working outside the home, let alone climbing the ranks of any corporate ladder. That number accounted for just 20% of all women.
On the heels of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, women were mainly confined to jobs in agriculture, domestic service and manufacturing, not exactly glamorous lines of work; the manufacturing sector, in particular, was notorious for its dangerous working conditions. On top of that, women’s wages across the board were a fraction of men’s.
For many women, McConnell would radically alter that scenario. The man behind the company for women was the son of Irish immigrants and grew up on a farm. Yet, it was this young man from rural New York, a visionary leader decades ahead of his time, who would become a pioneer in empowering women. McConnell, a bookseller-turned-perfume entrepreneur, would offer women the opportunity to create and manage their own businesses through what later became known as direct selling.
In his travels as a book salesman, McConnell made two important discoveries. First, he quickly noticed that his female customers were far more interested in the free perfume samples he offered than they were in his books. He made these fragrances himself to serve as “door openers” when he traveled from home to home. Second, McConnell saw women struggling to make ends meet and recognized in many of them natural salespeople who would easily relate to other women and passionately market the products his new company would first sell — perfumes.
McConnell’s first recruit for Avon, then known as the California Perfume Company, was Mrs. P.F.E. Albee of New Hampshire. Not only did he provide Mrs. Albee and other early Representatives with an earnings opportunity when employment options for women were extremely limited, he fostered a supportive environment with a familial feel. (The company newsletter was even called the “Family Album.”) In one of his regular letters to Representatives, he wrote: “All success lies in one’s self and not in external conditions. … Misfortunes are only a discipline, and there are possibilities which often are awakened by them which suggest to us the power and strength we possess, that perhaps otherwise would never have been recognized.” No wonder the Representative ranks rose to 5,000 in just 13 short years.
To McConnell, the product and the people were everything to the company, and he dedicated himself to ensuring that both would be successful. In addition to inspiring the Representatives, McConnell also wanted to encourage the company’s employees with the same positive spirit. A century before it would become de rigueur for companies to institute employee incentive programs and hire hordes of consultants to make sure employees were happy, motivated and productive, McConnell knew just how to rally the troops. The motivational leader created a set of guiding principles that are still the heart and spirit of Avon today. They include:
McConnell believed strongly in the potential of people, and that in that potential lay the power of possibility and, eventually, success:
“If we stop and look over the past and then into the future, we can see that the possibilities are growing greater and greater every day; that we have scarcely begun to reach the proper results from the field we have before us.” –David H. McConnell, Avon’s Founder
One of the most enduring and iconic images of women’s entrepreneurship is the Avon Lady. For more than 125 years, Avon Representatives have brought beauty into the lives of women — first at home through door-to-door sales, then in the workplace to colleagues and friends, and now online. Through economic boom times, depressions, world wars and other crises, what’s united Representatives over the decades and across continents is their dedication to building personal relationships with the customers they serve. It’s a commitment that’s both timeless and universal.
Known as the first ever representative, Founder David H. McConnell handpicked Mrs. Persis Foster Eames Albee to become the company’s first Representative and affectionately dubbed her the “Mother of the California Perfume Company.” Mrs. P.F.E. Albee of New Hampshire was 50 when she began selling perfumes for McConnell. She traveled by horse and buggy and by train, offering perfumes such as the inaugural single-note scents – Violet, White Rose, Heliotrope, Lily-of-the-Valley and Hyacinth– door-to-door throughout the Northeast section of the United States. In a letter to McConnell, Mrs. Albee wrote, “I know of no line of work so lucrative, pleasant and satisfactory as this.”
The legendary Mrs. Albee is still considered a role model for Avon Representatives today and is credited with creating the company’s system for distributing products.
Viola Morse didn’t have a car when she became a Representative at the age of 36. She’d walk 3-4 miles a day carrying her demo bag to visit customers, even in the harshest Massachusetts winters. But Morse didn’t mind. She loved running her business and used her Avon earnings to send her children to college. Her dedication knew no bounds, and this became even more apparent after Avon hired her to manage her sales district. One evening, following a day of recruiting Representatives, she encountered a storm that flooded the roadways and essentially paralyzed her town. Morse was forced to abandon her car (purchased two years after starting her Avon business) but not before diligently gathering her recruiting materials.
Her son was surveying the flooded streets in a boat as part of the town’s rescue efforts and surprisingly encountered his stranded mother. He shuttled her and her stacks of rescued recruiting literature across the flooded road to safety. For the Morses, Avon was a family affair.
“We lived Avon in my household,” Morse’s daughter, Carol Dorsey, fondly recalls. Dorsey and her sister both became Avon Representatives themselves, helped their mother assemble customers’ product delivery bags and mimeographed their mother’s “Avon Angel Bulletin” newsletter, listing Morse’s top 10 “angels” (achievers). Morse, who passed away in 1995, sold Avon for 11 years. Daughter Carol remembers, “I was very proud of her. She was very accomplished at what she was doing.”
Milena Maria Gavazzi Paredi began selling Avon in 1966 during the company’s first year in Italy. The 69-year-old’s Avon business is still thriving. To Paredi, Avon means the chance to do something different and to meet a lot of people. She became a Representative after hearing her mother’s friend talk about what a wonderful earnings opportunity it would be. Like many Representatives, she first used her earnings to buy products for herself and for customer demonstrations. Her biggest sellers that first year with Avon were fragrances – Topaz, Charisma and various cream sachets – as well as bubble bath. Today, her customers seem to have a penchant for the Faraway fragrance line and Glimmersticks makeup.
“This is the only company where you can make people successful and change their lives. … It was fate that I was placed in this company to give earnings opportunities to dealers (Representatives in the Philippines),” says Soledad Lacson Pena. Pena has been selling Avon since the company first entered the Philippines in 1978. In fact, since the 1960s, she had been working for Beautifont, the Philippine company Avon acquired upon entering the market. Pena began selling Avon so she could assist her husband in covering the family’s basic living expenses: clothing, food and utility bills. She also contributed to her children’s schooling, helping to pay their tuition at highly competitive schools and colleges. Since Pena launched her Avon business, she and her team have never had a day without any sales. This tech-savvy 70-year-old uses the Internet to communicate with her team and get reports. She also promotes Avon products through text blasts.
“Avon gives me the feeling of self-significance. I can earn a stable income and have confidence in tomorrow,” says Larisa Nuzdhina. Nuzhdina started selling Avon in 1997 after retiring because she didn’t want to simply “do nothing.”After just two campaigns, she became a Sales Leader. At first, she used her earnings to purchase Avon cosmetics and later a new flat, garage and her own office. She’s won two cars from Avon … and at the age of 65 got a driver’s license so she could start driving. Nuzdhina exclaims, “Thanks to Avon for changing my life!”
Until she started selling Avon, Natividad Bravo’s life was one of hardship and struggle. An orphan with a less-than-ideal childhood, she was on her own by the age of 15. During one of the more challenging times in Mexico as the country’s currency was collapsing, Bravo started her Avon business and success quickly followed.
Bravo had a knack for direct selling and was even more intensely focused on her business after a pair of tragedies struck – the sudden death of her husband followed by the death of one of her four sons from cancer. For Bravo, Avon has always been a bright spot in her life. She’s won numerous awards, traveled extensively and built a home for her family.
Rather than go door-to-door, she has always preferred finding customers in public gathering spaces such as the market. When Bravo began selling Avon, the company’s most popular products were Fonet, Sunware, Elegante, Charisma and Flamingo.
Irina Minca already has a team of more than 600 people … and she’s only 23. Minca knows her way around the social media world and is savvy when it comes to leveraging the Internet for her business. She reads “every forum or blog that is related to Avon so I can make a good impression on my customers by knowing everything about the company” and frequently posts comments. Every day she reads Avon Spaceblog, voted “Best Company Blog” in Romania. She also collects customers’ orders online.
Minca started selling Avon in 2005 as a way to earn extra money. This young Representative has been so successful that she’s already been able to buy not only clothes and cosmetics but also a computer and car with her Avon earnings. Minca says Avon has helped her develop in many ways and has made her more responsible. She calls Avon “my hobby, my family, my business.”
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