40 Fun Facts About Mary Kay

Which luxury car brand, painted pale pink, became the famous reward for top Mary Kay sellers?

Cadillac got the job after Mary Kay Ash ordered one painted to match her lip and eye palette, over the dealership's protests. A year later, five went to her top sellers.

The first Mary Kay skin creams grew out of a solution a cosmetologist's father used in which trade?

Tanning leather left the man's hands looking unusually young, so his daughter turned his solution into skin creams. Mary Kay Ash used them for years, then bought the formula.

On which notable day in 1963 did Mary Kay Ash open her first shop, Beauty by Mary Kay?

Friday the 13th of September brought no bad luck: sales reached nearly $200,000 in the first full year, with 318 women selling.

Mary Kay chose pink packaging in the 1960s to look good on display in which mostly white room?

Bathroom counters were the target: most American bathrooms of the 1960s were white, and pink products were meant to be kept out within easy reach.

Which insect, set in diamonds on a pin first awarded in 1970, is the Mary Kay emblem of achievement?

Bumblebee wings were long said to be too weak to lift its body, so the pin honors women who, like the bee, flew to the top anyway.

Mary Kay Ash launched her cosmetics company in 1963 with life savings of roughly what amount?

$5,000 covered a small office and a first batch of skin creams, and nine saleswomen had signed up before the doors opened.

Mary Kay Ash left her sales job in 1963 after a promotion she expected went to whom?

A man she trained got the post, so she began writing a guide for women in business, and her notes turned into the plan for her own company.

Which age-old moral principle did Mary Kay Ash make the guiding philosophy of her company?

The Golden Rule, treating others as you would want to be treated, heads the company's list of values, where it is glossed as doing what is right, honorable and ethical.

Which larger direct-selling rival did Mary Kay try and fail to take over in 1989?

Avon blocked the bid, so Mary Kay joined an investor group that bought almost a fifth of its shares before pulling out in 1991.

Which actress played Mary Kay Ash in the 2002 CBS movie Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay?

Shirley MacLaine earned a Golden Globe nomination for the part and called the cosmetics queen one of her favorite characters.

In which Texas city did Mary Kay Ash open Beauty by Mary Kay, a 500-square-foot storefront, in 1963?

Dallas was where a former employer had moved her to build its market, and her first office sat in a complex called Exchange Park.

What title does Mary Kay give the independent sellers who buy its products wholesale to resell?

Beauty Consultants carried the title from the first day in 1963, when they bought stock at half the retail price and resold it at small gatherings.

Mary Kay Ash's motto for balanced priorities put which of these first, ahead of family and career?

Faith came first, family second and career third, an order she said she built the company on and one it lists among its core values.

Besides cancers affecting women, which cause does the Mary Kay Ash Foundation raise money to fight?

Domestic violence became the second half of the mission; the foundation, set up by the founder in 1996, has given more than $100 million to shelters and research.

What did Mary Kay Ash and her family do with the company in 1985 after its share price slumped?

Took it private: a $315 million buyout ended 17 years on the stock market and returned Mary Kay Cosmetics to family ownership.

Which country's 1998 ban on direct selling forced Mary Kay to drop its usual sales plan there?

China banned direct sales three years after Mary Kay arrived, pushing it into retail for a time, yet the country became one of the company's largest markets.

Which country, Mary Kay's first international market in 1971, did the company leave in 2020?

Australia hosted the first subsidiary outside the United States; almost fifty years later the company closed its operations there and in New Zealand.

Which son of Mary Kay Ash quit his job at 20 to help launch the company and later became chairman?

Richard Rogers ran the money and the paperwork for $250 a month, armed with two college marketing courses and a spell selling life insurance.

Ryan Rogers, who followed David Holl as Mary Kay chief executive, is what relation to Mary Kay Ash?

Grandson of the founder, he took charge of a business owned by her family, which the official history says she started alongside her three children.

Early Mary Kay conventions ran workshops teaching which group to support the sales force's careers?

Their husbands got sessions on backing a wife's Mary Kay career, at annual gatherings that quickly became publicity events in their own right.

At which household goods company was Mary Kay Ash a sales queen before starting her own business?

Stanley Home Products paid a small commission on recruits' sales, and she signed up some 150 women, a lesson she carried into her own company.

What did Mary Kay Ash call her sales force's annual gathering, first held in a company warehouse?

Seminar began in 1964 as a yearly mix of recognition, inspiration and business education for the year ahead.

Which TV news program's 1979 interview with Mary Kay Ash came before a doubling of the sales force?

60 Minutes put her in front of the whole country; within two years her sales force had more than doubled and sales had almost tripled.

Which newspaper comic strip mocked Mary Kay in the late 1980s for testing its products on animals?

Bloom County named its 1989 book collection The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos, and the company stopped animal testing later that year.

Which North Texas town became home to the Mary Kay Building, the company's new headquarters, in 1995?

Addison became the company's fifth headquarters site in 32 years; the first, in 1963, was an office of just over 500 square feet.

What did Mary Kay call the 1960s line created after it found men using their wives' skin care?

Mr. K made Mary Kay one of the first cosmetics companies to offer a complete range of skin care for male customers.

Which Mary Kay product, launched in 1995, went on to become the company's number one bestseller?

Oil-Free Eye Makeup Remover arrived the same year the company moved to a new headquarters and was still its top seller almost thirty years later.

Which black American sports car joined Mary Kay's reward cars in 2011, before a BMW replaced it?

Ford Mustang, in solid black, sat a rung below the famous pink top prize and gave way to a black BMW in 2014.

Which Mary Kay award, its convention's highest honor, is a memorial to sales director Sue Vickers?

Miss Go-Give goes to the sales director who best shows unselfish devotion to helping others, the quality Vickers was remembered for.

Which honor, named for a 19th-century novelist, did Mary Kay Ash receive for overcoming adversity?

Horatio Alger Award winners are honored for rising from hardship; the Direct Selling Association also placed her in its Hall of Fame.

The first Mary Kay sales director suit, a black wool two-piece, came with which Texan accessory?

Cowboy hat and suit together launched the tradition of a special outfit that marks out sales directors, starting in 1965.

Mary Kay earned a 2013 Guinness World Records title for the largest what, made entirely from makeup?

Painting was the medium: Texas artists and art students spent more than 1,000 hours on a piece 76 feet long that went on display at the company's headquarters.

What did Mary Kay call its home demonstrations, capped at six guests with payment on the spot?

Skin care classes were meant to teach rather than sell, and the product line was kept short so that every seller knew each item well.

Which growth route did Mary Kay reject in the 1960s because women would need men to finance them?

Franchising would have cut into the independence the company wanted for its sellers, so it sold shares to the public and used the proceeds to expand.

Which subject did Mary Kay Ash tackle in her 1984 guide, a New York Times best seller?

Managing people was the theme of Mary Kay on People Management, which grew out of a guide to direct selling she had set aside twenty years earlier.

Which title does the 1981 autobiography of Mary Kay Ash carry in later editions?

Miracles Happen is the name on the edition reissued for the company's fortieth anniversary; the memoir first appeared simply as Mary Kay and has sold over two million copies.

Which US president honored Mary Kay Ash and other businesswomen with a White House briefing?

Ronald Reagan and his senior officials briefed the group on the administration's business and economic plans for 1987.

Mary Kay Ash was born in 1918 in which small Texas community in Harris County?

Hot Wells was her birthplace; she went to school in Houston, and by the age of seven she was caring for her ailing father.

Which American designer made the dresses of Mary Kay Ash displayed in the Mary Kay Museum?

Victor Costa gowns filled the museum's fashion display, shown alongside starter kits through the years and a 40-seat theater.

Which white SUV joined the Mary Kay incentive plan for the company's 35th anniversary in 1998?

GMC Jimmy, in white, widened a program that by 1993 already had 6,500 sellers driving pink cars or other company vehicles.