Avon Review: Products, Job Opportunity and More

Posted in Avon

Even people who aren’t otherwise familiar with direct sales or network marketing have heard of Avon, the company that pioneered the direct sales industry.

The company was originally founded as the California Perfume Company by David H. McConnell in 1886. McConnell had been selling books door-to-door and was using perfume as a sales incentive, but the perfume proved more popular than the books.

Mrs. P.F.E. Albee was the company’s first “Avon lady.” It was Mrs. Albee who pioneered the business model of using direct sales from friend to friend to sell the company’s products. To recruit “agents,” Mrs. Albee traveled the country by train and on horseback, introducing the product and the opportunity to women who had never even considered going into business for themselves. This business model proved so successful that the company had recruited more than 10,000 agents by 1903.

The company expanded rapidly, with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Quebec by 1914, and was officially incorporated by McConnell and Alexander D. Henderson in 1916. The name was changed to Avon Products, Inc. in October, 1939.

Today, Avon operates around the world, with more than five million representatives and $10 billion in sales.

Avon isn’t just a business pioneer. Mrs. Albee, for example, was traveling throughout the country recruiting agents to the new company years before women were allowed to vote, let alone before it was an accepted idea that women could own businesses.

That spirit continues today with the company’s many philanthropies. The Avon Foundation has raised and awarded more than $580 million to women’s causes and today concentrates on the problems of breast cancer and domestic violence. The company has also awarded more than $17.5 million to help women and their families affected by natural disasters or crises.

Avon Products

Avon has come a very long way from its start as a perfume company at the end of the 19th century. In fact, today’s Avon looks less like a makeup and skin-care company and more like a department store.

A very large department store.

In addition to the products that have made Avon famous for more than a century, today’s Avon representatives are able to sell everything from skin care to bikinis and from shoes to a portable grill bucket. You can still purchase the products you’re used to finding with Avon – but you can also purchase fine jewelry starting at price points of more than $80.
Avon has even included an outlet site on its representatives’ websites so customers can take advantage of closeout items.

The company has also targeted the youth market with mark., a product line specifically geared to younger tastes. The line includes cosmetics, clothing, fragrances, shoes, and jewelry.

In addition, Avon has started a separate philanthropic venture through its mark. brand called m.powerment by mark. This campaign is using proceeds from specially selected products to raise awareness of dating abuse and partner violence. According to the m.powerment by mark. site, “Women ages 16-24 experience the highest rates of partner violence and mark. wants to change that statistic.”

Avon Opportunity and Compensation

With commissions of up to 50% of sales, Avon is one of the more generous compensation plans in the network marketing industry. Representatives can also earn income by sponsoring and mentoring a downline, though the company does not do much to stress that aspect of the opportunity.

Of course, anyone looking to start an Avon business will be faced with the fact that the brand is so well established that it might be hard to make significant inroads against existing representatives. And the company seems to mandate that the personal sites it provides representatives all have the same look and feel, with little to no personalization. This could make it more difficult to self-brand to make the best use of online marketing tools.

However, creative uses of blogs, social networking sites, and article placement combined with the principles of attraction and experiential marketing would go a long way toward limiting the effects of these handicaps.

And with the company’s popularity, representatives will do better if they make sure to spend a significant amount of time and energy branding themselves.

Recommendations

It’s hard to argue with a hundred-year history and more than $10 billion in yearly sales. There are a lot of reasons that more than 5 million people are representing Avon today.

Now that the company has so many different products, brands, and product lines, it wouldn’t be difficult for an Avon representative to brand herself as an expert on a topic that relates to one of those lines. For example, fitness experts can give health and fitness advice while directing prospects to their Avon business website for Curves-brand products and coupons for free two-week memberships.

Skin care, hair care, and fashion experts are other types of people who could benefit quite a bit by incorporating Avon into their personal brands.

In fact, one of the best ways to profit through Avon may be to add promotion of an existing Avon brand or product line to an already-established related business like online personal training or fashion advice and tips.

For people wanting to make Avon their sole business, there are still plenty of ways to make that option work. In addition to online tools like social media sites and blogs, Avon’s vast and deep reputation makes it much easier for representatives to use some of the traditional network marketing tools, like approaching family and coworkers.

As long as the representative doesn’t push the product, Avon is something that a lot of people will respond to eagerly by themselves.

The bottom line is that Avon remains a solid way to start and build a network marketing business. The products are high quality, there are hundreds for customers to choose from, and the Avon brand literally can sell itself. Even people who aren’t looking to put a lot of time into a network marketing business or who want to pursue an MLM as a hobby should do well with Avon.

Jessica says…

We all know that Avon is a great company. If I weren’t doing so well with my Scentsy business, I might consider giving Avon a try. But if I were going to get involved with Avon, I would definitely put the time in to target a specific niche to sell to. I’d probably specialize in Avon’s fitness products because they look like so much fun, but I might also work with their skin care products a lot. There are just so many options with Avon that I think I’d get bogged down if I tried to sell everything equally, so I know I’d need to work on branding myself.

There are a lot of great options to build an online Avon business, too. Again, it comes back to branding yourself so that people feel at least as connected to you as they do to Avon. Of course, the Avon brand can actually make it easier to do this. When you’re with Avon, your name is automatically associated with one of the best companies in the business.

I also like the fact that, like Scentsy, Avon is a no-pressure company. They don’t require a lot from their representatives, and if someone wants to they can easily just run their business as a hobby and have fun with it.

If you’re looking for a network marketing company that has as many product lines as any great mall, take a look at Avon!