DINGDONG! Avon calling ...all over again

They were icons of beauty from a simpler age... yet during lockdown Avon ladies have doubled. Now put your lippy on for a trip down memory lane

THESE days, if your make-up turns up on your doorstep, it’s because you’ve ordered it online. Gone are the times when a smiling, scented Avon lady would ring your bell, carrying a bag full of powders, lipsticks and eye shadows for you to peruse in the comfort of your own home.

Or are they? Amid fears that the economic impact of Covid-19 would be ‘disproportionately felt by women’, Avon has revealed it’s seen a 114 per cent surge in the number of new representatives joining its UK arm since lockdown began.

Avon was founded in America in 1886 by David McConnell, a travelling book salesman who discovered the women who typically answered the door while their husbands were at work were more interested in the free perfume samples he offered than his books.

realising he was on to a largely untapped customer base, McConnell recruited women — an even larger untapped workforce — to act as sales agents. It was a winning concept.

In 1959, Avon launched in the UK with the catchphrase ‘Ding dong, Avon calling!’, quickly capturing the hearts of middleclass housewives thrilled to be able to combine work with raising a family children.

Meanwhile, with the austerity of the war years fading, the arrival of an Avon lady provided a frisson of excitement in often humdrum lives, with perfumes and talcs among the most popular products first sold. By 1969 there were 50,000 Avon ladies.

Today the power of its products has endured; one of its lipsticks sells every 20 seconds.

So will you be opening the door to the Avon lady once again? Here our writers share their memories of those nostalgic days . . .

VISITOR WHO WAS AS IMPORTANT AS MILKMAN by Mandy Appleyard

SUNANA tanning lotion in a bright-yellow banana-shaped bottle; Kwick Tan bronzing lotion; Unforgettable talcum powder in a pink tin — the Avon lady would arrive at our front door clutching delicious- smelling paper bags full of some of the most beautiful scents of my childhood.

She wore baby-pink lipstick and a tangerine-orange mini skirt, her bobbed blonde hair curled up at the bottom. She was an impossibly glamorous figure in the Yorkshire backwater where we lived — a beauty queen bearing luxury gifts.

Throughout my childhood in the 1960s and 70s, one Saturday a month was Avon Saturday, when Yvonne would turn up with whatever my mum had ordered from the catalogue the previous week.

Like millions of other young women in Britain, my first taste of the world of beauty products came courtesy of Avon.

As teenagers, my sister and I pored over the Avon catalogue and its smorgasbord of goodies: makeup we weren’t even allowed to wear yet; smells for bath-time, perfumes with evocative names like Come Summer and Sweet Honesty.

Avon was as much a part of my childhood as the milkman, the icecream van and the butcher’s delivery boy — a neighbourhood institution prized by many at a time when the personal touch still mattered.

One memory stands out. For my 12th birthday, my mother bought me my first ever perfume, a small green pot of lavender- scented cream with a purple twist lid modelled like a sheaf of lavender. I dabbed the perfume on my wrists and neck and had never felt more grown-up.

Eventually, when I was allowed to wear make-up, what I didn’t buy at the local Woolworths with my meagre pocket money arrived via my mum’s Avon order: a turquoise cream eye shadow; a cobalt-blue mascara; a powder blusher in a shade called ‘Pretty as a Peach’.

Like being taught to make an apple crumble or how to knit a scarf, Avon was one of the motherdaughter bonds of my youth.

Decades on, Mum still uses their night and day Anew face creams, their lipsticks (which she swears are the best on the market) and their Black Suede talc.

When the Covid lockdown came in March, once again we were glad of Avon in our lives, waiting for our delivery of everything from sanitising handwash to talc.

Avon may seem old hat to a generation of women raised on Mac and Benefit, but it’s still one of the longest-running beauty and cosmetics brands in the world. And for Mum and me, now as then, it’s not just a corporate entity. We grew up with it, and so it has earned a place in our hearts.

I’D LOVE AVON LADY TO CALL ON ME by Shirley Conran

IN 1968, I was the founding editor of Femail. Our focus was on empowering women in small, encouraging ways — and in big ways too, like backing Equal Pay. I went on to write Superwoman, which was also about empowering women by helping them to reduce household management, leaving them time to do other things.

The way I see it, Avon offered similar opportunities. After all, it gave housewives a new way of earning cash when it was hard to find a job to fit round the family.

Fast forward 52 years to lockdown when many uncomplaining women had more work heaped upon them — home- schooling children, caring for elderly parents and a possibly depressed husband. And for months they did their valiant best to keep the family cheerful.

It is predicted that the economic impact of coronavirus will be disproportionately felt by women. So it is good to hear of one situation where women are profiting: the number signing up as Avon cosmetics sales representatives. And these new representatives will earn 20 per cent of what they sell from the first £1 — instead of having to log orders of £90 before earning a penny, as they used to.

Another advantage offered by Avon to people who live alone, like me, is having a visitor who is interested in you. Avon, please send me a brochure, a price list and tell me who to telephone for a visit.

Although much of their selling is done online, some reps still call on customers and I imagine it’s this personal touch people love.

I don’t expect someone as exquisitely made up as those frightening young women behind the big store cosmetic counters; I expect someone kind who will feel comfortable in my kitchen and who will help me improve my appearance.

While I haven’t been reduced to daytime pyjamas, I know that looking better will improve my coronavirus-battered morale.

And this new job will help the morale of the Avon ladies, too — it will improve their self-confidence by encouraging them to learn the art of talking cheerfully to strangers. Something many of us could benefit from.

IT EASED TEDIUM OF MUM’S HOUSEWORK by Jenni Murray

FOR a year in 1965, I became intimately acquainted with Avon after my mother became one of the army of Avon ladies. After some training in the arts of selling from Auntie Mary who ran a beauty salon, she filled the spare bedroom with her products, before moving from door to door to sell to her ‘clients’ — most of whom became good friends.

Every few weeks she held tea parties to show off her wares, for which I was co-opted as her assistant.

I made the tea, handed round the home-made buns and biscuits she’d spent all morning baking, and allowed myself to be used as a model, bored out of my brain as she rubbed moisturisers into my face to show how youthful they could make you look.

It was ridiculous, really, because my skin was already that of a flawless 15 year old.

The few pounds we made every week contributed to my pocket money, it kept Mum busy and doubtless eased the tedium of being a housewife.

I was not a fan though, being a dedicated user of everything Mary Quant. How much more engaged I would have been if only she’d sold those products.