Avon calling: World's first 'Avon lady' was a man, UD researcher notes
Contact: Beth Thomas, (302) 831-8749, [email protected]
To view photos go to: http://www.udel.edu/PR/NewsReleases/avon/avon.html.
The predecessor of the Avon lady was a man. Farm boy D.H. McConnell began his career in 1877 selling books door-to-door and giving away perfume samples as part of his sales pitch, notes a University of Delaware historian currently completing a doctoral dissertation titled, "Avon Ladies and Fuller Brush Men: The Gendered Construction of Door-to-Door Selling, 1886-1970."
Katina Manko is a graduate student in the University of Delaware-Hagley Museum Program, which focuses on the history of industrialization, gender in the workplace and other issues. In addition to her dissertation, she authored a fall 1997 article on the California Perfume Company, now Avon, and recently earned a Smithsonian Institution fellowship.
Her research revealed that from selling door-to-door McConnell rose through the ranks of Union Publishing Co, eventually buying into it. He soon discovered that the perfumes he was creating were more successful than the book-selling business, and so he officially changed name of his company to the California Perfume Co. (CPC) in 1892, Manko explains.
An innovative marketing manager, McConnell decided to sell perfumes and other beauty products through independent, door-to-door sales representatives. These were women selling perfumes and toiletries and later household products, like silver and furniture polish, to other women in their own hometowns.
It was novel approach in the late 19th century, Manko says, giving women an opportunity to earn money, and the system took advantage of the social networks of women in small towns. (Avon did not sell to women in large cities until many years later.) Also, customers tended to trust their neighbors more than traveling salesmen, and the products were shipped promptly and were as good as they had been represented, building a reputation of reliability for CPC, Manko points out.
The sales representatives were recruited by traveling agents, typically unmarried or widowed women who could be away from home and on the road for extended periods of time. By 1900, 48 traveling agents had recruited and trained more than 5,500 door-to-door sales representatives, Manko says.
The strategy worked well. Although McConnell was an absentee manager, he kept in constant touch with his traveling agents and sales representatives by mail, encouraging and occasionally scolding them when their performance lagged. "Enter upon your work joyously, without fear, and push for the result desired," the monthly newsletter exhorted.
Sales representatives proudly reported back what they were doing and how they were using their earnings, such as paying off the mortgage on the farm. Luckily for Manko, the women entrepreneurs left records of their activities. She was therefore able to review historical documents such as an old photograph of Oregon sales representative Effie Miller, with her hat firmly pinned in place, in the 1911 Brush Runabout car she had won from the company after being named top sales agent.
Avon brand products were introduced by CPC in 1928, and the company became Avon Products Inc. in 1939. Although women were the foundation of the company, there were none in the upper levels of management. Cecily Selby, a New York University professor, was the first woman to serve on the board of directors in 1972, Manko says.
Avon was the forerunner of other successful businesses aimed at the home consumer, such as Tupperware and Mary Kay Cosmetics, Manko says. World War II was a watershed event in direct selling, and it ushered in home parties as the salesplace. Many Avon sales representatives now sell in the workplace or other settings, and much of its current business is in Third World countries, Manko says.
In addition to Avon ladies, Manko is interested in Fuller Brush men, but the records of the Fuller Brush Co. are far less complete than Avon, as many of the records have been destroyed over the years, Manko said. She said she hopes to travel to Nova Scotia, where Alfred Fuller began the company, to seek the early records.
Fuller began the company at the turn of the century and at first hired college boys as salesmen. The men, bringing sample brushes or other cleaning aids, came into women's homes and demonstrated to women how to do their housework more efficiently.
The company had a different approach to selling, operating more competitively like a sports contest, Manko says. Unlike the Avon ladies who worked part time, the Fuller Brush men were employees of Fuller Brush, worked full time and were expected to make their quotas. They were rewarded and motivated by promotions and other incentives.
Unlike Avon ladies, Fuller Brush men attended weekly sales meetings and touched base with their supervisors more frequently than the Avon ladies. Theirs was not money earned on the side but a regular income, she says. Although most of the sales force was male, there were some "Fullerettes" selling cosmetics.
The company is headquartered in Kansas, and like Avon, much of its business now is in Third World countries.
"Avon Calling" was a motto of the company, but calling Avon for her research was something else, Manko discovered. She placed almost 20 calls and wrote letters to the company trying to seek access to research their records. Manko finally took her case to Selby, who was still serving on the board of directors. Suddenly, she recalls, doors opened.
"Avon was generous and very helpful," she says. "They gave me an office on the 20th floor of their then-New York headquarters on 57th Street (they have since moved to Rockeller Center) with a view overlooking Fifth Avenue. I copied old manuals, newsletters and catalogs, and they shipped all my boxes of papers back to Delaware. It was a graduate student's dream come true," Manko recalls.
As she grew to know the people at Avon, she suggested that company archives be placed in a safe, secure place where they could be cataloged and used by other scholars and historians. Michael Nash, curator of the Hagley Museum's manuscripts, traveled to New York to talk to Avon management and invited them to visit the library. This resulted in the archives becoming part of the Hagley Museum and UD Library collection, and led to a recent exhibition in the library lobby that presented a historical overview of Avon.
From January to June, Manko will be a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution where Tupperware manuscripts our housed, researching that company's approach to salesmanship.
For information on The UD-Hagley Museum Program, go to the World Wide Web site: http://www.udel.edu/clio/hagley.html. To view Avon artwork, go to the site: http://www.udel.edu/PR/NewsReleases/avon/avon.html.
Contact:
Beth Thomas, (302) 831-8749
[email protected]
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