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This first history of Avon traces the direct sales company's growth from its earliest days into an international corporation that operates in more than 60 countries and has had more than 4 million female representatives.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: David McConnell and the California Perfume Company, 1890-1929: Direct Sales Strategy and Structure
- Chapter 2: "Now You Are In Business For Yourself": Representatives, Gender, and Business, 1890-1929
- Chapter 3: The Work and Business Culture of California Perfume Company Traveling Agents, 1890s-1930s
- Chapter 4: "The Dawn of a New Era": Introducing Avon Products and a Depression-proof Business Strategy
- Chapter 5: The Men and Women of Avon: Creating New Corporate Territories, 1936-1946
- Chapter 6: "Ding Dong! Avon Calling!": Selling Women's Economic Personality in Post-War America
- Chapter 7: Women of Enterprise: Avon and the Women Who Wanted it All
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
About the author
Katina Manko is an independent scholar specializing in US women's history. She has taught at Bard College, Ramapo College, and Merrimack College, and currently teaches History for the Yeshiva University High School for Girls. She lives in New York City.
Summary
The Avon Lady acquired iconic status in twentieth century American culture. This first history of Avon tells the story of a direct sales company that was both a giant in its industry and a kitchen-table entrepreneurial venture.
With their distinctive greeting at the homes across the country--Ding Dong! Avon Calling!--sales ladies brought door-to-door sales of makeup, perfume, and other products to American women beginning in 1886. Working for the company enabled women to earn money on the side and even become financially independent in a respectable profession while selling Avon's wares to friends, family, and neighborhood networks.
Ding Dong! Avon Calling! is the story of women and entrepreneurship, and of an innovative corporation largely managed by men that empowered women to exploit networks of other women and their community for profit. Founded in the late nineteenth century, Avon grew into a massive international direct sales company in which millions of "ambassadors of beauty" sat in their customers' living rooms with a sample case, catalogue, and a conversational sales pitch. Avon was unique in American business history for its reliance on women as representatives, promising them not just sales positions, but a chance to have a business of their own. Being an Avon Lady avoided the stigma that was often attached to middle-class women's work outside the home and enabled women to maintain the delicate balance of work and family. Drawing for the first time on company records she helped acquire for archives, Katina Manko illuminates Avon's inner workings, uncovers the lives of its representatives, and shows how women slowly rose into the company's middle and upper management. Avon called itself "The Company for Women" and championed its high flyers, but its higher echelons remained dominated by men well into the 1990s.
Avon is more than perfumes and toiletries, but a brand built on women knocking on doors and chatting up neighbors. It thrived for more than a century through the deceptively simple technique of women directly selling beauty to women at home.
Additional text
Adding much to the study of women and business history, Manko's fresh and sophisticated contribution uncovers a precursor to our gig economy that for too long has been dismissed as nostalgia. Manko's nuanced examination of the inner workings of Avon reveals contradictions and continuities in paternalistic decision-making that nevertheless opened the door for both beauty sales and female entrepreneurship that operated often as a side job.
