first edition Color-printed cream paper folding brochure. Illustrated front and back panels
[n.d., ca. 1928-1929.] · New York:
by [ Avon Products, Inc. ]
New York: California Perfume Co., Inc., [n.d., ca. 1928-1929.] First edition in this format? Date implied by the illustration of Gertrude Recordon's Facial Treatment, Avon's first skincare collection, which was launched in 1928 and failed just a year later. OCLC records two copies of a longer booklet (32 pp.) under the title For You and Your Home: A Pictorial Selection from the Many Choice Products of the California Perfume Company, one record dated 1926 and the other 1928 (both at the Hagley Museum). OCLC also records two copies of what seems to be the present brochure, one record dated 1929 and the other 1935 (both at the Hagley). Color-printed cream paper folding brochure. Illustrated front and back panels. Brochure (3 x 8 in., folds out to 22 x 8 in.) . Illustrated in color with over forty Avon products. Fine. In 1886, David H. McConnell (1858 – 1937) founded the company that would become Avon Products Inc. when he decided to sell perfumes door-to-door rather than books. In 1892, he changed the name of the company to the California Perfume Company on the suggestion of his business partner. In 1939, the company changed its name to Avon. The company has used the "direct sales" model—in which customers, mostly women, purchase products to resell to other customers—since its inception and counted around 25,000 resellers among its ranks by the 1920s. Along with avoiding the operating costs of physical stores, Avon's model also allowed the brand to reach customers who couldn't access luxury retail establishments: about eighty percent of Avon's representatives lived in rural areas, more than two-thirds of them in the western United States.
(Inventory #: 17688)