Avon Is Trying to Give Itself a Makeover
The fixture of door-to-door selling is turning to the web.
In 2016, with two young children and needing money for her law studies, Samantha Richard decided to become an Avon Lady. Trudging from home to home in the suburbs of London, struggling to sell lipstick and mascara, she lasted a day. “My anxiety couldn’t handle it,” says Richard, now 23. “I wasn’t ready to start knocking on strangers’ doors, so I thought there had to be a better way.”
It turned out there was. Richard began making Facebook Live videos offering beauty tips and directing customers to Avon Products Inc.’s nascent e-commerce platform. She added her own YouTube channel, which has grown to 2,900 subscribers, supplementing her appearances with Instagram posts and tweets. Now she sells Avon goods to customers from Yorkshire in England’s north to Cornwall in the far southwest—most of whom she’s never met.