Avon Is Calling The Shots Now

FT.com:

The televised Super Bowl show earlier this year had chatrooms a-twitter not just because of the football teams’ performances but because of one eyebrow-raising advertisement: it was not one of the usual pizza and beer spots but a pitch from Avon Cosmetics intended to recruit new representatives.

There are over 5m Avon representatives worldwide. Sales are up 10 per cent to $10bn (£6.1bn), pre-tax profits for 2008 were $875m and recruitment is soaring.

Avon is not the only such direct-sales success story. “We are doing well because of, not in spite of, the economic downturn, with our sales growing at 400 per cent,” says Carl le Souef, owner of Become, an Australian- and US-based direct selling service launched two years ago. Similarly, Vie at Home, formerly Virgin Vie, a UK direct-sales beauty brand introduced in 1997, has seen a 14 per cent increase in the number of “active consultants” since the beginning of 2009 to 9,287 (an active consultant being someone who has placed an order of £50 or more in the past two months). While the US company Arbonne launched in the UK last year.

Logo from Avon

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