WNY AVON

The oldest beauty company in the United States, Avon Products, Inc. has grown from a modest line of perfumes sold door-to-door to one of the world's leading brand of cosmetics. It manufactures and sells cosmetics, fragrances, toiletries, accessories, apparel, and various decorative home furnishings. Avon employs a unique direct-selling method, which was greatly responsible for its incredible success in the 1950s and 1960s, when women were easily found in the home for sales purposes. After unsuccessful efforts at diversification into the health-care service industry left the company with massive debts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Avon began to refocus on its roots: beauty products and direct selling. The company's products are sold through catalogs, mall kiosks, its prestigious day spa in Trump Tower in New York, the Internet, and in J.C. Its products are also sold directly to customers in nearly 143 countries by 3.5 million independent sales representatives, making Avon