Mary Kay, a beautiful name, created a career related to beauty. In her hands, Mary Kay, a world-famous cosmetics company, was born. From the initial small storefront, it has now expanded its business to 37 countries, with 750,000 sales organizations, and its sales in 2000 reached $654.38+0.3 billion, which is the result of her 45-year-old business. Such an extraordinary woman, her legend and perseverance have been engraved in the history of mankind forever.
A divorced woman who started with $5,000
1918 may 12, Mary Kay was born in Houston, Texas, USA. At the age of 6, she began to take care of her father who was bedridden with tuberculosis, while her mother worked 14 hours a day in a restaurant. My mother is very optimistic about life and encourages her in almost everything, from school homework to selling snacks after school to make money. "You can do it" is what my mother often says. This self-confidence has been with Mary Kay all her life.
17 years old, Mary Kay, who graduated from high school, married the local Rogers. It was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Melanie Kay started her sales career in order to support her family. At first, she sold children's psychological books, and she did very well by virtue of her tough personality and good communication skills.
But not long after, she decided to change direction and tried to find a company that could provide a series of products. She turned her attention to Stanley Household Products Company, which directly sells household utensils and detergents. Her performance in this company is still outstanding. She was promoted to manager and an award-winning sales champion. But her talent is wasted-the company is a man's world, and her opinions and suggestions will only be laughed at. Just when Mary Kay was deeply confused, another pain came. Mary Kay's husband insisted on divorce after returning from military service. Although Mary Kay knows that her marriage is not happy, for a devout Christian, the failure of marriage is a huge blow to Mary Kay, who once described it as the lowest point in her life.
1938, at the age of 20, her family moved to Dallas. A young single mother with three children did not stagnate. Despite all the difficulties, she completed her college studies with unimaginable perseverance. In order to maintain various expenses at home, she found a job selling household necessities. In order to motivate herself to work hard, she writes the weekly soap sales target on the bathroom mirror, which can be seen every morning when she gets up, which increases the pressure.
1/after kloc-0/year, Mary Kay has accumulated rich sales experience because of her diligence and hard work. She transferred to a direct selling company called Gift World. Because of her hard work and outstanding performance, she successfully won a seat on the company's board of directors and expanded the company's sales area to 43 States. 1963, the company hired an assistant for her, but the annual salary was twice as high as her own, just because the assistant was a man. Mary Kay couldn't stand this contempt for women, so she was fired and went home in a rage. By this time she was 45 years old.
After retirement, Mary Kay plans to write a book to guide women how to survive in the male-dominated business world. She listed two writing outlines on her dining table: one is the good things she saw in the company where she worked; The other is what she thinks should be improved.
Seeing these words, Mary Kay's inspiration suddenly came: since she has so many experiences and ideas, why not start an ideal new company herself? It will be the carrier for countless women to realize their own values. Mary Kay thinks that a skin care product she has contacted is very effective, so she is going to open a special cosmetics company to meet not only the needs of customers, but also the desire of women's personal achievements. This is a company that realizes its dreams. 1963 September 13, with the help of her son Richard, Mary Kay poured her savings-$5,000 to set up Mary Kay cosmetics company. The road to success is always full of thorns. Just one month before Mary Kay's company was about to open, her second husband died suddenly because of an acute illness. Everyone advised Mary Kay to wait a while before starting her career, but she still set out, and a legend was born.
Dreams come true-as long as you are willing to work hard
1963 September 13 Friday, a day considered unlucky by westerners, Mary Kay, who just lost her husband, started her dream trip in a 46-square-meter shop in Dallas. Mary Kay named the new company after her. The original employees were only her, her son Richard and nine beauty consultants. The cosmetics that Mary Kay sells directly come from a beauty formula that she bought from a beautician.
Mary Kay said: "Many people start businesses to make money, but this is by no means my main motivation. It's not that I'm rich enough to care about money. I just think this business must be successful, otherwise I won't have a second chance to start a business. " Because she is already a grandmother.
At the beginning of the company's business, Mary Kay devoted herself to providing unprecedented opportunities for women's economic independence, personal development and personal achievement. Mary Kay takes the golden rule of "treat others as you want them to treat you" as the guiding concept and marketing concept of her company, vigorously advocates the life priority principle of "faith first, family second and career third", and encourages other women to join their own careers with the spirit of "you can do it".
Choosing cosmetics for direct selling means that Mary Kay must compete with Avon, a direct selling giant with a history of 25 years at that time. Mary Kay completely changed the traditional way of door-to-door direct sales. She called her salespeople "beauty consultants" and promoted products in groups, with no more than five or six participants in each activity. Mary Kay said: "This way is convenient for our consultants to guide women on how to maintain their skin." Mary Kay naturally became the company's chief beauty consultant. Mary Kay also adopted the policy of cash on delivery, which was not adopted by ordinary companies at that time, which made the company not need a lot of start-up funds. More importantly, she asked them to pay only 50% of the retail price to buy a complete set of products, which is far lower than the price of ordinary direct selling companies, and many women benefited more from it. This policy not only greatly inspired the enthusiasm of the company's beauty consultants, but also saved the company from many bad debts. Because of 25 years of experience in the direct selling industry, Mary Kay knows that bad debts of direct sellers often lead to bankruptcy of direct selling companies.
In the first year of its establishment, with the cooperation of Qi Xin, a 10 "beauty consultant" (salesperson), the company's sales income reached 200,000 US dollars, and rose rapidly to 800,000 US dollars in the second year, and it has a sales team of 3,000 women. 1976, Mary Kay Company was officially listed on the new york Stock Exchange, which was the first time for women.
Since then, the company's performance has been getting better and better, from an unknown company to the largest direct seller of skin care products in the United States. Today, Mary Kay has more than 850,000 independent beauty consultants (mostly women) and branches in 37 countries on five continents. The annual retail sales exceed $2.4 billion, ranking first in the sales of facial skin care products and cosmetics in the United States for 8 times in the past 9 years. Fortune magazine listed Mary Kay Company among the top 65,438+000 companies in the United States for three times, and it is one of the top 65,438+00 companies for women. Mary Kay is also the only woman among Forbes' 20 greatest businessmen. She has developed the company from a small direct selling company to the largest direct selling company of skin care products in the United States, with business in 37 countries and regions and annual turnover of 2.5 billion US dollars.
Create a bright future for women
Mary Kay represented by this name is not only the founder of Mary Kay Company, but also a symbol of lofty ideals and the realization of a great belief!
Mary Kay's success stems from her business spirit of serving others to the letter. At the beginning of Mary Kay's business, she established the purpose of service first. In her beauty class, she asked the beauty consultant to "teach" instead of just "sell". When training sales staff, we should also make them think: "How to make this customer more beautiful and confident?" Instead of: "How much money am I going to make from her today?" This is exactly the same as the principles of "customer-centered" and "service first" pursued by many famous companies today. Mary Kay believes that such a service belief will make people's eyes full of love.
Not only that, Mary Kay also hopes that the company should do more for women than just manufacturing and selling products. She suggested that the company should take "enriching women's lives" as its own responsibility. Career Development After leaving the United States, she proposed to create a "career for women all over the world". With Mary Kay's vigorous advocacy, Mary Kay's golden rule, guiding philosophy of giving priority to life and market concept quickly spread all over the world with her and her 800,000 beauty consultants. People commented that Mary Kay Ash was selling her work philosophy and life philosophy directly while selling her cosmetics.
Most importantly, Mary Kay has inspired thousands of Qian Qian women to become small business operators through her business structure. Under her own management style, she promotes women's self-esteem and self-confidence with constant encouragement and material rewards. Some magazines marvel that Mary Kay liberated more women than Gloria Si Tong, the leader of American feminist movement. Mary Kay herself thinks that the greatest achievement in her whole career is to see many women succeed. Because Mary Kay knows that if women's unique intuition and essence can be properly played and properly supported, her achievements will be infinite.
The aim of Mary Kay Company is to "enrich women's life". At this point, the diamond bumblebee brooch, as a symbol of Mary Kay's success, has such profound significance. Mary Kay said: "From an aerodynamic point of view, the bumblebee will never fly because it is heavy and its wings are too fragile, but people forget to tell it." That's what women do-as long as they are given opportunities, encouragement and honor, they can fly high. "
Her efforts were recognized. Because of her outstanding achievements in managing a world dominated by men, Mary Kay is considered as the most successful female entrepreneur in the world today.
Forbes magazine compared her with American oil tycoon Rockefeller, financial tycoon Morgan, automobile tycoon Ford and software giant Bill Gates, saying that they were the most legendary and successful figures among the 20 global business people in the past 200 years, and she was the only woman among them.
1999 As the only business person, she was rated as the most influential woman in the 20th century by Life Times TV Online, along with scientist Madame Curie and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa. At the same time, the company she leads is also on Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 companies in the United States, and has been selected as the magazine's "100 Most Worth Working Company" for three times, and the magazine also lists it as one of the most suitable companies for women to work in 10. She won numerous awards.
2001165438+1On October 22nd, Mary Kay died at her home in Dallas at the age of 83. Although she has passed away, we can clearly see her management art, keen enthusiasm and hard course from her three best-selling books, Mary Kay on Human Management, My Heart and You Can Have Everything.
The "Queen" of the direct selling industry, the founder of the Kingdom of Mary Kay and a model of successful women, has made great contributions to the world business history with her colorful life and amazing achievements. Her extraordinary story has been handed down to this day and has been interpreted as an immortal modern legend in the reinforced concrete city!
Secret of success
The tempering of several marital setbacks, coupled with the ambition to dare to start a business for 50 years. The Service Purpose and Orientation of "Enriching Women's Life"