Guess what? It's another Birthday Doodle! That's right, my super cutesy friend, Katie is celebrating another trip around the sun. She loves Penguins, Dr. Who, sour gummy worms, Three Musketeers, noodles, sweet tea and make-up, more specifically, Mary Kay make-up! *Enter Daily Doodle* (It was actually thanks to the lovely Katie and her sister that I had mascara and eye liner for my birthday vlog this year!)
When did Mary Kay start? Let's start with the person, Mary Kay Ash. No surprise, she started her career in direct sales, but when she realized there weren't great advancement opportunities for women in traditional direct selling companies so she "retired" in 1963... it lasted a month. With the intention of writing a book about her direct sales experiences, she instead wrote a marketing plan for a new kind of direct selling company.
She chose a skin care product she had been using since the early 1950's, which she felt wasn't well marketed) and committed her lifesavings of $5000 to her new venture. Due to the untimely death of her husband, her son Richard (at the age of 20), volunteered to quit his job to help launch the new company.
On Friday, September 13, 1963 Mary Kay, along with her son Richard and the first nine Independent Beauty Consultants opened the doors of a small store front in Dallas, Texas. This was the first chapter in American business history nw being studied across the country and colleges and universities.
Word of the products and Mary Kay spread quickly and with so many women wanting to become Independent Beauty Consultants, the company created a position of Independent Sales Director to help educate and motivate the new Consultants. In a year, Mary Kay had 21 Independent Sales Directors and 857 Independent Beauty Consultants. Mary Kay Ash's other son, Ben Rogers, served as Vice President of Merchandising until 1980, and her daughter, Marylyn, played a pivotal role in expanding the Company in Houston. In just three years, the Company surpassed $1 million in sales.
In 1968, the company went public, and Mary Kay Ash also convinced a Cadillac dealer to custom paint her car pink to match her lip and eye palette, and inadvertently creating one of the most recognizable company trademarks in the world. Mary Kay Independent Sales Directors immediately wanted to know how they could get their own pink Cadillacs, and the first five were awarded at the Mary Kay Seminar in 1969.
Mary Kay opened its first international subsidiary in Australia in 1971 and Canada in 1978. In 1985 a management buyout returned the company to private ownership. The vision of one women went on to be Fortune's 'Most Admired Corporations in America' and listed in the '100 Best Companies to work for in America'.
So there you have it. Mary Kay in a nutshell, thanks to the darling Katie and her birthday. Have you ever tried Mary Kay make-up?
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