Transnational beauty: Avon International and the case of Italy

ABSTRACT

A clear example of the cultural adaptation process is represented by the global spread of one of the most famous American cosmetics companies, Avon Products. The products related to hygiene and cosmetics, in particular, are deeply influenced by the canons of the dominant culture regarding aesthetics, fashion, morality, gender, religion. This paper will concentrate on one of these challenges, namely, the company’s international strategy in order to expand into different countries, focusing on a case study, Italy. Avon’s history exemplifies the role of light industries during a boom in the economy; it shows the adjustments to a changing market and embodies the challenge of adapting to a different cultural context. Executives at Avon Italy were forced to consider issues like gender and class in their strategies, as their American counterparts did before them, but in a different framework. Moreover, they found that the key to success was the development of targeted marketing for Italian female consumers: a marketing where local sales representatives played a key role.

RIASSUNTO

La diffusione globale di una delle imprese cosmetiche americane più famose, la Avon Products, rappresenta un chiaro esempio dei processi di adattamento culturale. I prodotti relativi all’igiene, e i cosmetici in particolare, sono profondamente influenzati dai canoni della cultura dominante in termini di estetica, moda, moralità, genere, religione. Questo articolo si concentra su una sfida, e cioè sulla strategia internazionale dell’azienda per espandersi in Paesi diversi, focalizzandosi sul caso studio dell’Italia. La storia di Avon esemplifica il ruolo delle industrie leggere durante il periodo del boom economico, le trasformazioni per un mercato in evoluzione e simbolizza la sfida dell’adattamento a un diverso contesto culturale. I dirigenti di Avon Italia furono costretti a prendere in considerazione nelle loro strategie aspetti come il genere e la classe, come già avevano fatto in precedenza le loro controparti americane, ma in una situazione differente. Inoltre, scoprirono che la chiave del successo risiedeva nello sviluppo di un marketing mirato alle consumatrici italiane, un marketing in cui le rappresentanti di vendita locali svolsero un ruolo fondamentale.

KEYWORDS:

• Avon
• consumer goods
• beauty
• gender
• corporate culture
• women’s work

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Avon
• Prodotti di consumo
• Bellezza
• Genere
• Cultura d’impresa
• Lavoro femminile

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Centre for the History of Business, Technology, and Society of the Hagley Museum and Library for an H.B. du Pont Research Grant, and in particular Roger Horowitz. This work is based on extensive research in the vast Avon Collection at the Hagley Museum and Library Archives and in Italian archives (in particular, in the Historical Archives of the Como Chamber of Commerce, containing all the economic documents related to the history of Avon Italy); as well as a corpus of original oral interviews with Avon Ladies and their customers, and the existing scholarly literature. All the documents pertaining to Avon’s history used in this article are in the Hagley Museum and Library, Avon Archives, Accession 2155. For a guide to this archive material see the Avon Historical Archive at the Hagley Library, https://www.hagley.org/research/digital-exhibits/avon-historical-archive-hagley-library, 10 November 2020.

^2. See the map of the Avon market on https://www.avonworldwide.com/countries, 4 January 2021.

^3. See Fortune’ Ranking 2019, category Household and Personal Products, https://fortune.com/fortune500/2019/search/?industry=Household%20and%20Personal%20Products, 30 December 2020.

^4. https://ri.naturaeco.com/en/naturaco-holding-s-a/presentations/, 30 December 2020; Annual Report 2020.

^5. Hagley Museum and Library, Avon Archives [henceforth HML Avon], Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, Avon International (esp. box 69).

^6. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, Avon International.

^7. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, Avon International, boxes 76 to 95.

^8. Archivio Storico della Camera di Commercio di Como (Historical Archives of the Como Chamber of Commerce) [henceforth ASCCC], ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Atto costitutivo, Rome 17 April 1964.

^9. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Map Case 3, Drawer 8.

^10. Article also available in the HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, box 108.

^11. ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets various years.

^12. In 2005 Avon Ladies in Italy were 47,897; they placed 648,693 orders for an average amount of 119,52 euros (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheet 2005).

^13. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, box 91.

^14. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, boxes 92, 93.

^15. ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets, various years.

^16. Avon Products in New York granted Avon Cosmetics a three-year financing of 1980 million liras in 1975; a second five-year financing of 5000 million liras in 1980 (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets 1975, 1980).

^17. Article 36 of the law of 11 June 1971, n. 426 acknowledged and regulated door-to-door sales for the first time in Italy; it was a starting point for Avon. On the contrary, there was uncertainty about their fiscal treatment for years.

^18. Events that strongly affected the company were: the introduction of new taxes on consumption (IVA) and the price freezing after the oil shock in 1973; the forced six-month financial deposit to limit imports in 1974; the limitation of bank credit in 1980 (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets various years).

^19. The purpose of the undertaking was expanded to toys, low-cost ornaments, and cosmetic accessories in January 1972; mail and catalogue sales in July 1974; jewellery and precious objects, paper articles, books, publications, stationery in November 1980; finally in April 1984 the aim became the production and/or selling of every article (apart from edibles) that could be sold through direct sale (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets various years). Textile lines Tenerezza and Fashion became important especially from the 1990s.

^20. The company also used calculators for warehouse control (the turnover of stock was 6.7 in 1986); they turned out to be very useful in facing unexpected problems. For instance, the national mail service took a long time to transfer due amounts of money from the sales representatives to Avon in 1977; the situation dramatically worsened because of repeated strikes in 1978. So, Avon Cosmetics decided to cooperate directly with the automated mail service and prepared special forms for optic reading to solve the problem in 1980.

^21. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series VII, OS-60.

^22. HML Avon, Accession 2155, RG I, Series XI, Avon International, box 90.

^23. ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Report to the Board of Directors, 31 December 1987.

^24. Between 1984 and 1987 Avon implemented a restructuring and dismissed a large quota of staff (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Corporate Balance Sheets various years).

^25. Issued capital (of 5000 million liras from 1980) and corporate assets were divided following a 3 to 1 ratio: 3,750,000 liras to Avon Cosmetics, 1,250,000 to Cosmint, which acquired the productive plant (ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Progetto di scissione, 31 August 1993). Cosmint officially started in 1994.

^26. ASCCC, ‘Avon Cosmetics S.p.a.,’ n. 2242/6422, Progetto di scissione, 31 August 1993.

^27. The research is based on about a hundred interviews of Avon Ladies, conducted between 2014 and 2016, both through written questionnaires and direct interviews, in Milan and Lombardy.

^28. Interview with Elisa D., 6 September 2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emanuela Scarpellini

Emanuela Scarpellini is Professor of Modern history at the University of Milan. She has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the University of Cambridge, and also a visiting professor at both Stanford and Georgetown universities. Scarpellini is the founder and director of the research centre MIC—Moda Immagine Consumi (Fashion Image and Consumer Culture) at the University of Milan. Her current interests are the economic and cultural aspects of the consumer society, the spread of mass culture from the U.S., and the role of consumers. Her last works are about the history of consumption in the twentieth century, in particular food and fashion. Among her publications are Italian Fashion since 1945: A Cultural History (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Material Nation: A Consumer’s History of Modern Italy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011).