Avon is a one of the world’s leading beauty companies and today’s article is from the book called Avon, Building the World’s Premier Company for Women, by Laura Klepacki, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2005.The book offers good insight into how Avon operates and continues to be successful. In general there are some business lessons to be learnt from Avon:

Never forget who is responsible for your success – for Avon it is their sales force of women. The key is does the company show it and are people consistently going out and talking about Avon?

Keep up with significant trends, but stick to your values.

Remember what business you are in. Similar to all profitable dividend companies, a healthy cash flow means people want to spend it, Avon diversified into many categories and then came back to beauty products and direct selling.

Maintain a consistent message – whatever country Avon is in, people know that at is core, Avon is a beauty company that empowers women and supports women’s causes such as breast cancer.

Let you independent contractors do it their way. Avon puts few restrictions on how its sales representatives promote, advertise or operate their businesses. This freedom allows people to be creative to sell Avon, which means each business is unique.

Create and nurture your image – in case of Avon it started with door-to-door selling and has changed but it is still a person to person sale. Advertisements continue to tell consumers to call their Avon representative.

Use available tools effectively. – always invest in your future,

Build systems that support your business cycle – Avon has a quick spin cycle to continually introduce new products. Departments are structured to fit into the introduction of new products, it means it takes time for people to fit into the cycle and thrive.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the above lessons can be used to viewing any company, the answers will vary.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions