Mini Biography Mary Kay Ash, Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Your Invisible Mentor
How would you feel if someone you trained was promoted over you to become your supervisor at twice your salary? That’s what happened to Mary Kay Ash at World Gift Company, so she quit her job, planning to write a book for women on the art of selling. As she got ready to write, she outlined what an ideal company would look like, drawing on the experiences she had at both Stanley Home Products and World Gift Company: outstanding product line, treat male and female equally, base promotion solely on merit, and reward outstanding work with valuable prizes. Her outline became a business plan for what would turn out to be a multinational business empire that relies on women to sell merchandise to their friends. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics has over one million independent sales representatives and grosses more that $2 billion a year. Not bad for someone who started off with a $5,000 investment.
Name: Mary Kay Ash
Birth Date: May 1917 – November 2001
Job Functions: Entrepreneur
Fields: Cosmetics and Beauty Care
Known For: Pink Cadillac
Books: Mary Kay on People Management, Mary Kay: You Can Have It All: Lifetime Wisdom from America’s Foremost Woman Entrepreneur
To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Profile of Mary Kay Ash, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:
- Are their similarities between the person profiled and yourself?
- What are your five takeaways from the profile?
- When you think of the person profiled, what thoughts immediately come to mind?
- In what ways can you use the information in your work and life?
- Look at the process you use to get your job done, think of ways to improve the process and make it more efficient. Is there a way to eliminate a step or combine steps? Also, is there a way to do your work in a more cost-efficient manner?
- After reading the profile, what is one concrete action you can take?
Biography
At age six, Mary Kay Ash was forced to be reliant because her mother worked 14-hour days at a restaurant and her father was incapacitated with tuberculosis. At that tender age, she had to go to school, clean the house, cook the dinner and take care of her father. Despite this, she did very well in school and graduated from high school one year yearly. Ash aspired to become a doctor, but her family’s meagre resources could not stretch that far.
Ash married her first husband J. Ben Rogers – an aspiring musician and gas station attendant – at age 17 and had three children – two boys and a girl. As a young mother, she worked part-time in the late 1930s selling books from door-to-door. In 1938, in an effort to move her family out of her mother’s house, Ash started working for Stanley Home Products, a direct sales company which sold products such as brooms, toothbrushes and a wide assortment of other products for the home. She was a quick learner and had a knack for selling so she quickly rose to unit manager. Ash worked at Stanley from 1938 – 1952. While working at Stanley, in 1945, when her husband returned from World War II after serving three years in the US Army, he asked for a divorce.
In 1952, Ash moved to a similar sales job at World Gift Company where she remained for 11 years. Her talent and enthusiasm brought her great success and in one year Ash’s efforts contributed to a 53 percent increase in sales at the company. In 1959, Ash was made national training director for World Gift Company. In just over a decade of working at World Gift, Ash extended distribution in 43 states and earned a seat on the company’s board.
Unfortunately, some people believed that Ash had too much power and was demoted. The final straw came after a male assistant who she trained was promoted above her at twice the salary. She quit the company in 1963. Her intent was to retire and write a book for women about the art of selling, and to help women navigate the business world. While she worked for Stanley Home Products and World Gift Company, she developed effective selling technique and strategies, refined her theory of marketing and sales, which was to provide a quality product, target the product at a specific market, and offer sales incentives to the workforce as well as the customers.
While Ash outlined her book, she realized that she had a viable blueprint to start a business of her own. By this time, Ash had been married to her second husband for three years. Both pooled their financial resources of $5,000 to start the new company. For their first products, Ash bought the recipes for special skin softening formulas from Ova Heath Spoonemore, the daughter of an Arkansas tanner. Ash had used the cream for years so she knew that it was very good but had a very unpleasant scent. Ash had the cream reformulated to have a nicer smell.
Successful entrepreneurs Madam C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein had already paved the way for Ash and proved that the beauty industry was a lucrative one. The three entrepreneurs had “Invented a specialized product line and established highly effective sales networks.” But Ash was the first to provide women with unlimited opportunities for advancement.
Ash’s first employees were her second husband, a chemist and nine of her friends. Tragically, her husband died from a heart attack a month before official launch of the business. Ash brought in her 20-year old son Richard, and they launched Beauty by Mary Kay on September 13, 1963.
The first year they made $198,000 in wholesale revenue and by the second year, they were up to $800,000 and had a sales force of 3,000 women. They renamed the company Mary Kay Cosmetics. The company had an Initial Public Offering in 1968, and the greatest period of growth for the company was in the 1970s and early 1980s when the company’s stocks rose by a whopping 670 percent. Kay’s interview on 60 Minutes in 1979 aided sales. In 1981, sales increased over the previous year, by 41 percent, and were $235 million.
Between 1983 and 1985, women sought what they perceived as steadier employment instead of working in direct sales, and the revenues for Mary Kay Cosmetics reflected that. Their sales dropped from $323 million to $249 million during that time frame. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics has over one million independent sales representatives in the United States, Canada, Europe and former Soviet Union, and grosses more that $2 billion a year.
Philosophy: “God first, family second and career third.”
Interesting Tidbits
- The first pink Cadillac was awarded in 1969.
- In 1979, the first Mary Kay consultant exceeded $1 million in commissions. By 2003, more than 200 beauty consultants had surpassed $1 million in commissions.
- In 1995, a decade after the leveraged buy-out, Mary Kay was selling an estimated $866 million in products, at wholesale, to 20 million women annually.
- Over 6,500 of the 30,000-member sales force drive complimentary pink Cadillacs and other automobiles worth more than $90 million.
- The company also claims responsibility for creating more than 75 millionaires, calculated by the number of women who have earned more than a million dollars in commissions over the course of their careers.
- Mary Kay Cosmetics is a Fortune 500 company.
- The company was listed in a book titled, The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America: 3rd Revised Edition (One Hundred Best Companies to Work for in America)
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- Today, more than 600 women worldwide have become Independent National Sales Directors, the highest status within the independent sales force.
- Today more than 39,000 women across the world have become Independent Sales Directors.
.Philanthropy
Mary Kay Ash’s third husband died from cancer. She established a charitable foundation that provides funding for cancer research, particularly breast cancer, and for the prevention of violence against women.
Steps Mary Kay Ash Took to Succeed
- While working at Stanley Home Products she wrote her weekly goals on her bathroom mirror and scheduled three or more demonstrations each day.
- She used the 25 years of sales and management experience she acquired while working for Stanley Home Products and World Gift Company to make her business a success.
- Madam C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein paved the way for Mary Kay Ash in the lucrative beauty product market, but she was the first one to provide women with unlimited opportunities for advancement.
- Initially, Mary Kay’s line of cosmetics was sold by beauty consultants at house parties, featuring a beauty program and make-up lessons in the clients’ homes with groups of five or six people.
- Paid sales force well, up to 50 percent commission.
- Helped many women to a career and financial security by giving them the opportunity to earn their own income.
- She trained the independent contractors she hired in dynamic sales techniques.
- Held annual conventions where prizes ranging from jewelry, furs, pink Cadillacs, five-star trips to tropical locations for deserving employees. She held the first convention one year after she launched the business.
- Had a combination of direct sales techniques and a program of rewards that motivate the beauty consultants to excel.
- Provided lavish incentives as a way to recruit and retain beauty consultants, and to build the brand.
- In 1985, Mary Kay and her family purchased all the company’s publicly issued stocks to take it private again. They gave the company a makeover: Hired younger executives to run the business, updated the company’s image, revamped the cosmetic line and boosted the commissions paid out to the beauty consultants.
- The company has changed with the times and does not only rely on housewives seeking extra income, they are luring away executives and business school graduates from corporate jobs.
- They carry a line of more than 200 products, including facial skin care; cosmetics; fragrances; nutritional supplements; sun protection products; hair, nail, body care; and men’s skin care items.
Books:
Mary Kay on People Management
Mary Kay: You Can Have It All: Lifetime Wisdom from America’s Foremost Woman Entrepreneur
The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that’s why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
Further Reading
Mary Kay Ash – A beauty queen opens up the world of entrepreneurship to tens of thousands of women
Mary Kay Corporate Video — Mary Kay Ash — The Woman
Cannot view video? Click here. Uploaded by marykay on Mar 9, 2011
Works Cited/Referenced
The Sixties in America: Biographies
Encyclopedia of World Biography
UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography
Business Leader Profiles for Students
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
Inc. The Great Leaders Series: Mary Kay Ash, Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics
American Decades
Bowling, Beatniks and Bell-Bottoms – Pop Culture of 20th Century America
Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives
Book links are affiliate links.
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