40 Fun Facts About Avon

What was Avon founder David H. McConnell selling door-to-door before he switched to perfume in 1886?

Books were his trade, and the free perfume samples he handed out to get a hearing proved more popular than the volumes. He mixed the first scents himself in a small New York office.

Avon Products takes its name from the river that runs through which playwright's home town?

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the founder thought the countryside around his New York laboratory looked like it. The name went on a few products before the whole company took it.

Which famous doll, sold in special Avon editions in the 1990s, became the company's best-selling gift product?

Barbie reached Avon customers through a joint venture with Mattel, and the dolls did so well that a range of play cosmetics for girls followed.

Which Tim Burton film begins when a door-to-door Avon saleswoman calls at a Gothic hilltop mansion?

Edward Scissorhands sends saleswoman Peg Boggs up to the mansion, where she finds Johnny Depp's title character and offers to take him home to her pastel suburb.

Which luxury jeweller did Avon buy in 1979 for about $104 million, only to sell it five years later?

Tiffany & Co. was meant to lift the image of the door-to-door brand, but its profits slid after cheaper lines put off its regulars, and Avon sold it to an investor group.

Avon's international running circuit of the late 1970s helped win which event a place at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics?

Women's marathon racing needed entrants from 25 countries before the Olympics would take it, so Avon's circuit recruited runners worldwide. Its 1983 race was run in Los Angeles itself.

Which Oscar-winning actress became Avon's first Global Ambassador in 2007 and honorary chair of its foundation?

Reese Witherspoon signed a multi-year agreement that was her first move into endorsements, and she fronted the company's charity work for women as well as its adverts.

Which disease is the target of the fundraising crusade Avon launched in 1992 and of its sponsored walks?

Breast cancer became the company's signature cause when its British arm began selling a fundraising pin. The first sponsored walk followed six years later.

Which Avon body-care brand, launched in 1961, later added a DEET-free insect repellent called Bug Guard?

Skin So Soft became one of the company's best-known names, and its Bug Guard spin-off was made without DEET, the chemical in most rival repellents.

Under what name did Avon trade for decades before 1939, despite being based in New York?

California Perfume Company was the suggestion of an associate of the founder, who lived in that state and wrote to him in praise of it. The Avon name replaced it in 1939.

Which former Neiman Marcus executive became the first woman to run Avon as chief executive, in 1999?

Andrea Jung cut a third of the product line, repackaged the rest and doubled research spending. She stayed in the job for more than a decade.

Which group, then owner of The Body Shop and Aesop, completed its takeover of Avon Products in January 2020?

Natura & Co paid more than $2 billion and took a 76% stake in the combined business, which ranked as the fourth-largest beauty group in the world.

Which country overtook the United States in 2010 to become the largest single market for Avon products?

Brazil had become the biggest prize in a business that was leaving home: by 2013, about 88% of Avon's revenue came from outside the United States.

Which country's 1998 ban on direct selling forced Avon to switch to shops called Beauty Boutiques?

China lifted the ban in 2001, and five years later Avon received a licence to sell directly there again.

Lawsuits over which ingredient led Avon Products to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2024?

Talc claims pushed the 138-year-old company into court protection, less than five years after it had been bought for more than $2 billion.

For what price did Avon's parent company agree in 2025 to sell Avon International to the investor Regent?

A single pound was the nominal price, in a deal that left the Latin American and Russian operations behind with the seller.

Which rival direct seller teamed up with financier Irwin Jacobs in 1989 in a failed bid for Avon?

Amway was seen off partly by Avon's own sales force, who wrote to would-be buyers in huge numbers saying they would refuse to work for them.

Which Canadian city gave Avon's forerunner its first office outside the United States, opened in 1914?

Montreal got a sales office first and a manufacturing plant a year later, four decades before the company moved into Latin America and Europe.

Which perfume company offered $24.75 a share for Avon in 2012 in a takeover approach that came to nothing?

Coty was offering nearly 20 percent above the share price, but Avon's board said the approach was opportunistic and not in its shareholders' interest.

Which American track-and-field star appeared in Avon's 1996 Olympic-year advertising as an unlikely Avon lady?

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was named in a multi-million dollar campaign that Avon tied to its corporate sponsorship of the Atlanta Games that summer.

Who became the first sales representative for Avon's founder in 1886 and went on to recruit thousands more?

Mrs. P.F.E. Albee of Winchester, New Hampshire, built a base of 100 salespeople within six months and had trained nearly 5,000 representatives within 12 years.

The Little Dot Perfume Set, the first product sold by Avon's founder, offered five scents all taken from what?

Flowers supplied every one: white rose, violet, lily of the valley, heliotrope and hyacinth. He brewed them in a pantry-sized space in New York City.

Which sideline did Avon add in 1971 and grow so fast that it led the world in making it within five years?

Costume jewelry was so profitable that the cosmetics seller became the biggest manufacturer of it anywhere by the mid-1970s, just as its core business hit a slump.

Avon's ill-fated 1980s diversification, which left $1.1 billion of debt, took the beauty company into which industry?

Health care looked like a winner when Foster Medical became Avon's fastest-growing division, until Medicare cost controls devastated it. Every holding was sold by 1990.

Which prestige fragrance brand did Avon buy for $165 million in 1987 and sell to Procter & Gamble seven years later?

Giorgio Beverly Hills began as the first luxury boutique on Rodeo Drive, and its signature scent was launched in 1981 with a $260,000 party.

Which fashion designer teamed up with Avon in the 1990s to sell moderately priced casual wear through its catalogues?

Diane von Furstenberg signed a joint venture that took Avon into sportswear, timed to the company's sponsorship of the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Sheri McCoy became chief executive of Avon in 2012 after 30 years at which pharmaceutical and consumer-goods giant?

Johnson & Johnson had hired her as a chemical engineer in 1982, and she holds five patents. She had risen to vice chairman before leaving for the beauty business.

Avon's North American business was sold in 2019 to the household-goods arm of LG, a company from which country?

South Korea's LG agreed to pay $125 million in cash for the business, which had been split from the rest of Avon three years earlier.

To which city did Avon Products move its global headquarters from New York as part of a 2016 restructuring?

London became home after Avon split off its North American business into a separate company that kept using the Avon name there.

What name does Avon give to each of its short selling cycles, which began as three-week pushes in 1932?

Campaigns were later cut from three weeks to two in the United States to lift sales, while the longer cycle stayed in use overseas.

Which practice did Avon become the first major American cosmetics maker to abandon, around 1990?

Animal testing gave way to lab-grown cell tests, computer models and human volunteers, and PETA later listed Avon among the firms pressing regulators for change.

The Avon Championships, held at Madison Square Garden in 1979, were the season-ending finals of which women's sport?

Tennis players were chasing a $100,000 first prize, which went to Martina Navratilova after a three-set final against Tracy Austin.

Alongside a vanity set, which everyday bathroom item was among the first products to carry the Avon name?

A toothbrush and a vanity set were among the very first, launched while the firm still traded under its old name. The whole company became Avon in 1939.

Which pop singer launched her debut fragrance, Outspoken, with Avon in 2010 and later fronted its haircare adverts?

Fergie followed it with four more Avon scents over the next five years and went on to serve as a global ambassador for the Avon Foundation.

Avon's Anew skincare range, launched in 1992, was the first to bring which anti-ageing ingredient to the mass market?

Alpha hydroxy acid made Anew one of the company's best-known names, and the range was still growing eight years later with an age-reversal cream, Anew Retroactive.

In which village in Rockland County, New York, did Avon's forerunner build its laboratory in 1897?

Suffern got a three-storey laboratory when the firm was 11 years old, and the founder put down roots there too, serving as schools superintendent and bank president.

In which women's magazine did the future Avon place its first print advertisements, in 1906?

Good Housekeeping carried the adverts in the same year the firm issued its first colour catalogue and lost its San Francisco office to the great earthquake.

Which American department store chain began selling beComing, a brand Avon created for shops, in 2001?

J.C. Penney stocked the range as Avon's new chief executive pushed the brand beyond its representatives, three years after it opened kiosks in shopping malls.

Which British skincare brand, founded on the Isle of Wight, did Avon own from 2010 until 2015?

Liz Earle was co-founded in 1995 by a beauty writer of that name and her friend Kim Buckland. Avon sold it on to Walgreens Boots Alliance for £140 million.

In which New York skyscraper did Avon open an upmarket day spa, the Avon Centre, to give its brand a trendier image?

Trump Tower housed the spa as part of a late-1990s effort to shake off what had become a stodgy image with younger women.